Alpharetta Internal Medicine
1380 Upper Hembree Rd
Roswell,Georgia 30076
Telephone: 770-475-2377
Fax: 770-442-0193

Maps & Directions

Cumming Internal Medicine
950 Sanders Rd
Cumming, Georgia 30041
Telephone: 770-475-2377
Fax: 770-442-0193

Maps & Directions

Preventative Care

Preventative medicine is a specialty of medicine practiced by physicians devoted to health promotion and disease prevention. Physicians with expertise in preventative medicine are typically interested in health problems that have a significant impact on specific populations, such as those with multiple risk factors for cardiovascular disease, a highly prevalent condition. Conversely, a disease may become the focus of preventative medicine despite its low prevalence because it causes significant illness, disability, and death (e.g., a disease with a high case-fatality rate such as infection with the Ebola virus). Other health problems important to preventative medicine are those that disproportionately affect one narrow segment of a population, such as unintended pregnancies among urban adolescents.

Physicians who practice preventative medicine may work with individual patients in the delivery of clinical preventative services, or they may serve a defined population. In either case, the goal is to reduce the risk factors of the patient or the population that contribute to premature morbidity and mortality. Traditionally, in the United States, the medical and public health communities have assessed the diseases that cause the most mortality and have intervened to reduce their impact. Heart disease and cancers of all types remain leading causes of premature mortality. Recently, the emphasis has shifted from concentrating on diseases that are highly prevalent to a focus on the actual behaviors that cause these conditions. By approaching threats to good health in this way, behaviors such as smoking, unsafe sexual practices, dietary habits, and lack of exercise emerge as vitally important in determining disease or its absence. Preventive-medicine physicians embrace this approach to shape intervention strategies to target behaviors that cause disease.