November 14th, 2010 by Davis Liu, M.D. in Better Health Network, News, Opinion, Research
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The Associated Press ran a provocatively-titled piece recently, “Family health history: ‘best kept secret’ in care”, which noted how a geneticist at the Cleveland Clinic discovered that asking about family members and their history of breast, colon, or prostate cancer was better than simply doing genetic blood testing.
Surprising? Hardly. This is what all medical students are taught. Talk to the patient. Get a detailed history and physical. Lab work and imaging studies are merely tools that can help support or refute a diagnosis. They provide a piece of the puzzle, but always must be considered in the full context of a patient. They alone do not provide the truth. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Saving Money and Surviving the Healthcare Crisis*
September 20th, 2010 by StevenWilkinsMPH in Better Health Network, News, Opinion, Research
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According to Marshall Becker, PhD, MPH, a one-time professor of mine and prime mover behind the Health Belief Model (HBM), four things must be in place for health behavior change to occur. I am paraphrasing here:
- A person has to know that they have a particular health condition.
- A person has to believe that having said health condition is bad.
- A person must perceive the benefits of behavior change to outweigh the difficulties of behavior change.
- There must be a “call to action” to spark the change.
Absent any one of these steps and the likelihood that behavior change will occur is diminished. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Mind The Gap*