Health checks in general practice

BMJ 1995;310:1083-1084 (29 April)

Editorials

Health checks in general practice

Time to review their role

The NHS has changed a lot since the late Denis Burkitt (wholinked high fibre diets with preventing bowel disease) comparedillness to an overflowing bath and suggested that doctors andnurses might be better employed turning off taps than moppingthe floor. Increasingly, general practice has been consideredto be the right place for turning off taps,¹ ² and in 1990 healthpromotion was made a contractual requirement for general practitioners.³Does prevention of illness in primary care work? Three papersin this week's journal consider different aspects of that question.⁴⁵ ⁶ Unsurprisingly, the answer is not straightforward.

One group based in Oxford, testing strategies to reduce therisks of cardiovascular disease and cancer in general practicepopulations, has greatly influenced British health policy. Itis to the OXCHECK researchers' credit, therefore, that evangelisticfervour has not clouded their evaluative judgment. In theirlatest report they . . . [Full text of this article]

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Starfield, B, Hyde, J, Gervas, J, Heath, I (2008). The concept of prevention: a good idea gone astray?. J. Epidemiol. Community Health 62: 580-583 [Abstract] [Full text]
Richards, H., Reid, M., Watt, G. (2003). Victim-blaming revisited: a qualitative study of beliefs about illness causation, and responses to chest pain. Fam Pract 20: 711-716 [Abstract] [Full text]
van den Berg, P. J, van Dalsen, C. L, de Rooij, R. A., Prins, A., Hoes, A. W (1999). Cardiovascular health check in the elderly in one general practice: does it offer new information and lead to interventions?. Fam Pract 16: 389-394 [Abstract] [Full text]
Hanlon, P, McEwen, J, Carey, L, Gilmour, H, Tannahill, C, Tannahill, A, Kelly, M (1995). Health checks and coronary risk: further evidence from a randomised controlled trial. BMJ 311: 1609-1613 [Abstract] [Full text]