ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the strengths of primary prevention in promoting public health locally, nationally, and globally. We argue that the current allocation of resources between those needed for treatment-oriented healthcare and those needed for the purposes of primary prevention must be reconsidered. This argument is driven by the observation that health policies, practices, and allocated resources that promote the goals of primary prevention are losing out in competition with treatment-oriented healthcare policies and practices, particularly with in excess of 90 per cent of healthcare budgets globally being allocated to care, and less than 10 per cent being allocated to prevention. Our argument is made even more compelling by the observation that all aspects of healthcare face the common problems of increasing fi nancial and resource constraint (Rechal et al., 2011; Woolf, 2011) at a time when demand is likely only to rise.
