A lot of Primary Health Tasmania’s work ties in with preventing people getting sick, and stopping those already living with illness from getting sicker.
Speaking broadly, preventive health can be put into three categories:
primary prevention — trying to prevent disease or injury before it happens
secondary prevention — trying to reduce the impact of a disease or injury that’s already happened
tertiary prevention — trying to soften the impact of an ongoing illness or injury that has lasting effects.
By supporting preventive health across the board through our commissioning activity, we hope to keep Tasmanians well and out of hospital.
National approach to preventive health
The National Preventive Health Strategy 2021-2030 aims to improve the health and wellbeing of all Australians at all stages of life through a systems-based approach to prevention that addresses the wider determinants of health, reduces health inequities and decreases the overall burden of disease.
Primary Health Tasmania’s preventive health activities will be guided by the following priorities outlined in the national strategy:
reducing tobacco use
improving access to and consumption of a healthy diet
increasing physical activity
increasing cancer screening and prevention
improving immunisation coverage
reducing alcohol and other drug harm
protecting mental health.
Our work in preventive health infographic
Disease prevention is a wide-ranging area, and applies to a lot of Primary Health Tasmania’s programs.
That’s why we’ve created an A4 visual resource to summarise how we support disease prevention.
