HEALTH PROMOTION AND DISEASE PREVENTION

This month, the Journal of the American Medical Association and the family of specialty journals, including the Archives of Neurologyhas chosen its theme as Health Promotion and Disease Prevention. The editorial in JAMAannouncing this theme emphasized that effective health promotion and disease prevention represented the greatest potential to improve health.1 In neurology, this theme, at first glance, did not appear to be very applicable. After all, we are still struggling to find the basic mechanisms of many neurologic diseases and to find adequate treatments. However, it is easy to downplay what strides we have made in the area of prevention or, at least, what new areas have been opened where prevention may be applied.2-4 This issue of the Archives features preventive measures in three areas: cerebrovascular diseases, neurogenetic diseases, and epilepsy. Preventive measures have had a major impact on the decrease of the occurrence and severity. © 1995 Arch Neurol All rights reserved.