Health Risk Assessment

Prevention seems to be a key to improving behavioral health outcomes. As we know, primary prevention consists of activities that reduce the occurance of behavioral health problems; secondary prevention reduces the incidence of those problems, and tertiary prevention reduces the severity of behavioral health problems. The first step in prevention may be understanding the behavioral health risks of a specific population. From an understanding of the health risks, programs can be designed for prevention. Successful prevention hopefully will result in improved outcomes.

What experience have any of you had with health risk assessment? Especially a method that balances the need for comprehensive, useful information with cost, time, and resource constraints?

Look forward to hearing from you

• Health Risk Assessment - Reply by Ellen Dornelas, 3/18/97