What is meant by personalized prevention?

The health of the population depends on several factors: genetic; Social; Environmental; related to lifestyle. Prevention includes a series of actions both at the individual and public health level, which - thanks to the intervention of various professionals - aims to prevent the onset of diseases or to act on the people most at risk. In 80% of cases, the health of the population depends on controllable factors.

Despite the indisputable advantages, however, prevention receives little funding. In Europe, only 3% of funds dedicated to health are aimed at prevention. In Italy, about 4.5% of funds are spent on prevention.

At the primary level, two levels of prevention can be identified:

1.      primary prevention, which concerns health education and correct lifestyles for the entire population in order to avoid the onset of chronic diseases or vaccination for infectious diseases;

2.     personalised primary prevention, which consists in the identification of individual mechanisms that allow healthy lifestyles to be undertaken.

An example of this is social prescribing, i.e. the identification of genetic or genomic characteristics such as the polygenic risk score that allows the population to be stratified into risk bands and to communicate the basic risk. In this way, those interested will be able to identify the lifestyles most suitable for their condition. Another example of personalized primary prevention is the use of digital technologies: messages, Smart Watches, apps, alerts

Secondary prevention concerns people at high risk. A form of secondary prevention is, for example, mammography screening. For women who belong to families at high risk of BRCA mutation and who are - therefore - more predisposed to developing breast cancer as well, a BRCA test is available which is reimbursed free of charge through a pathway organized at the regional level. All this has a great impact on women's health.

The future goal is to perfect these services related to prevention and make citizens increasingly aware of the opportunities that exist for their health.