[Accomplishment of health promotion in municipalities]

Currently, the gap between the demand for treatment of cases of illness and the available resources for curative medicine has become so wide in Norway that it is time to introduce a new comprehensive system for preventive medicine in order to reduce human suffering and the cost of curative medicine. The authors propose a new system of preventive medicine which involves systematic collection of personal data on disease determinants, and concentrated intervention directed at individuals at high risk of illness and accident. Implementing a new system of prevention requires the establishment of units for intervention and screening, one unit per 100,000 to 300,000 persons. These units should collect personalized data on exposure to risk, particularly among high risk groups, to enable screening of groups of subjects according to their exposure to disease determinants and subsequent a priori disease risks. Based on systematic collection of such data, individualized risk-determined intervention is proposed among identified risk groups, to be carried out within the existing primary health care system.