Prevention Matters

As Congress tackles health reform, a new public education campaign by Partnership for Prevention notes that more than 100,000 lives could be saved every year by investing in five basic preventive services. That includes 45,000 deaths that would be prevented each year if people who could benefit were advised by their doctors to take a daily dose of aspirin to prevent heart disease and 42,000 lives that could be saved a year if doctors offered tobacco cessation counseling.

A print ad in Roll Call, a popular Capitol Hill newspaper, this week asks members of Congress - “If You Could Save 100,000 Lives, Would You Do It?” It spells out how increasing the widespread use of just five services available through a doctor’s office – aspirin counseling, tobacco cessation counseling, adult influenza immunization, colorectal screening, and breast cancer screening - would save an estimated 117,600 additional lives a year.

More information is available online at www.prevent.org/healthreform . Partnership has also launched a "How to Save 100,000 Lives" interactive quiz for Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/100kquiz.