Wise Health Care Consumers Know that Disease and Injury Prevention Begins at Home

A couple of days back, one of my clients sent me a link to a “Healthier at Home” publication of the American Institute of Preventative Medicine. As February is national “Wise Health Care Consumer” month, the title caught my eye.

Finally, I thought. Home healthiness has found its way into the world of preventative medicine.  I clicked the link to check it out. Guess what? I thought wrong.

Don’t misunderstand me. The guide is an impressive 400-plus page of critical information. If you are a healthcare consumer, you can learn a lot about what to ask your doctor in advance of seeking medical attention.  You can preview and order one for yourself here. It will likely save you a lot of confusion, time, and money.

But not one of those pieces of critical information has anything to do with home healthiness. And that’s a shame, because there’s a direct connection between our home environment and our health.

The Centers for Disease Control offers a “Healthy Home Reference Manual” with a similar title, but the content is more on point. “Housing quality is key to…health,” it states. “. …specific housing conditions are related to disease and injury.” The experts have been talking about this for decades.

In western North Carolina, folks often ask me to look at their homes from one of two healthiness perspectives: prevention or intervention.

Prevention measures mitigate the environmental factors known to cause health problems. The goal is to catch those things early, so it’s inexpensive to manage. During a home visit, clients often ask me to focus on the investigative and corrective aspects of home healthiness. They know their home is a major investment, and they want to live well and be well within it.

However, if someone in the home is already living with a chronic or serious illness, then my clients may ask me to focus attention where it’s needed most. In some cases, an intervention may be needed to address specific healthiness factors affecting quality of life. An EnviroVention™ focuses on ways the home supports an individual’s optimum wellness now and in the future, informed by their unique health challenges.

As “Wise Health Care Consumers,” we also need to know that the healthiness of our homes supports the healthiness of our bodies.