An assessment or determination of the most efficient and least expensive approaches to providing health care and preventive medicine services. One component, health education, focuses on helping people to assume some responsibility for their own health maintenance and avoid preventable illness and disability. Accident prevention programs, immunization drives, and safe-sex campaigns are designed to reduce the number of patients who will suffer preventable illnesses. To control costs, health care providers and health care customers must also understand the comparative value of procedures and medicines.

SEE: preventive medicine ; preventive nursing.

cost-effective, adj.