Revealing the causes of chronic disease epidemics: from research to prevention

Descriptive epidemiology, with support from metabolic epidemiology and other laboratory studies, has demonstrated a causative relationship between lifestyles--what we smoke, drink and eat, use of illicit drugs, and unsafe sexual practices--and the morbidity and mortality from chronic diseases. What immunization, sanitation and hygiene have done to reduce the scourges of infectious diseases must also be done to reduce the incidence of chronic diseases that have man-made causes. The challenge of applied epidemiology and preventive medicine is to improve health-related behaviours beginning with children's health education, extending to economic incentives for adult populations for good health behaviour, and engaging responsible industry, media and governmental influences to manufacture and promote safer products, and to provide a social and economic environment that is conductive to greater self-esteem and enables people to make the right health decisions. There is ample research to prove that our lifestyles are responsible for much of our health care costs. The challenge of improving the health of all people and of reducing health care cost can be most effectively met by practising disease prevention. After all, the history of medicine shows that the elimination of disease has rarely been the result of therapy, but rather, a consequence of prevention.