Non-Communicable Diseases and Health Promotion
Core concepts
Understand the leading NCDs (cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease) and shared modifiable risk factors (tobacco, unhealthy diet, physical inactivity, harmful alcohol use). Know the WHO 'best buys' and the Ottawa Charter for health promotion (healthy public policy, supportive environments, community action, personal skills, reorienting services). Master primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention for NCDs, and the concept of the epidemiological transition. Understand health behaviour models (health belief model, stages of change, social cognitive theory) and the social determinants of health.
Traps
- Confusing health promotion (upstream, enabling) with health education (downstream, information).
- Forgetting that the Ottawa Charter is the foundational health promotion framework.
- Mixing primordial prevention (risk factors in society) with primary prevention (risk factors in individuals).
- Assuming NCDs are diseases of affluence only-they disproportionately affect low-income groups.
Worked example / rule of thumb
If a population's smoking prevalence falls from 30% to 20% and the relative risk of lung cancer among smokers is 10, the population attributable fraction (PAF) = P(RR−1)/[1+P(RR−1)]. With P=0.3: PAF ≈ 0.73; with P=0.2: PAF ≈ 0.64. Rule of thumb: even modest reductions in a common risk factor yield large population-level benefits.