Convergences between quaternary prevention and health promotion

Abstract

Introduction: Quaternary prevention (P4) and health promotion (PS) are been developing in parallel. Objective: To present and discuss some relations of convergence between P4 and PS. Methods: This is a theoretical essay that relates ideas and literature selected unsystematically, considered essential for the discussion of the relationships addressed. Results: P4 converges with PS in two ways: a) due to its relationship with social medicalization and b) due to its convergence with actions that Geoffrey Rose called ‘reductive’ preventive measures - reducing increased risks of illness by reducing artificial exposures existing in the urban modern life. The medicalization generated in clinical and health care reduces the relative autonomy in the management of situations of suffering, pain and illness; and produces excessive dependence on professionalized actions. Individual and community empowerment expands autonomy, and this is an important goal of PS. The more successful the PS, the lower the medicalization; and the greater the medicalization, the more difficult the PS. P4 converges with PS due to its inhibition of medicalization derived from clinical action. PS also aims to impact general determinants of health-disease. This, operationally, brings it closer and sometimes identifies it with reductive prevention. P4 induces a relative preference for reductive prevention because it is safer and because it intensifies the critical attitude towards ‘additive’ prevention - the introduction of artificial protective factors (vaccines, lipid-lowering drugs and screening). Thus, the practice of P4 converges operationally with PS actions. Conclusion: P4 is convergent with PS in a micro-social dimension - in primary health care services (PHC) - and macro-social. Understanding the interface between P4 and PS facilitates its exploration, highlighting the relevance of P4 in clinical care and collective actions in PHC.