Question

1. Which of the following options best describes the disadvantages of the “high risk” approach to disease prevention?
   A. It labels people as being at high risk, often based on an arbitrary cut off point.
   B.   It usually only benefits those people in the population that are able to be identified as being at high risk.
   C.   Often, the majority of cases of disease or mortality occur among people who are not in the “high risk” group.
   D.   All of the above.

Answer 1

D.   All of the above.

The advantages of the High Risk Approach are

• May be more cost-effective than population wide approaches
• Those who are identified as being high risk may be more motivated to change their behaviour than the whole of society
• Easier for health professionals to promote change on an individual basis
• Individuals are usually aware of their exposure to adverse risk, whereas in society not everyone will have been exposed
• Society prefers focusing on individuals to change rather than a whole population

And the disadvantages of this approach are :

• Can be expensive to identify and treat those at increased risk
• Fails to address public health problems arising from small but widespread risks that may be substantial
• Ignores the point that a large number of people exposed to a small risk may generate more cases than a small number of people exposed to a large risk
• Tends to medicalise prevention
• Strategies for the individual tend to be either palliative or temporary
• Does not focus on what influences behaviour
• Does not tend to predict an individuals change in risk
• May have little overall impact on control of disease

The high-risk approach seemingly has many more disadvantages compared to the population approach, the prevention paradox reduces the effectiveness of the population approach, therefore a combination of population and high-risk approaches is usually most effective. High risk groups can be identified through screening, genetic testing, analytical studies linking risk factors and disease and ecological studies to identify groups