Prevention versus risk reduction or mitigation: Why create unnecessary battles?

In clinical medicine and epidemiology, we cannot know if the vaccine was helpful or harmful (preventive/causal) for any individual participant (known as sharp causal effect) because each participant either receives the vaccine or not. [...]we generally use causal and preventive in the context of des...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of science and medicine in sport 2023-07, Vol.26 (7), p.372-374
Main Authors: Shrier, Ian, Impellizzeri, Franco M., Stovitz, Steven D.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cancer
Disease prevention
Epidemiology
Heart
Immune system
Injury prevention
Intervention
Medicine
Poliomyelitis
Prevention
Risk mitigation
Risk reduction
Vaccines
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Summary:In clinical medicine and epidemiology, we cannot know if the vaccine was helpful or harmful (preventive/causal) for any individual participant (known as sharp causal effect) because each participant either receives the vaccine or not. [...]we generally use causal and preventive in the context of describing the average causal effect in the population. [...]this issue reflects the much broader challenge of how to communicate uncertainty to patients in general, and is not restricted to a preference for the term risk reduction versus prevention. [...]one can prevent a certain percentage of injuries (relative risk or relative risk reduction) or a certain number of injured athletes (absolute risk reduction). [...]risk reduction needs to be further qualified. [...]using definitions that are consistent with the broader scientific community is helpful for communicating scientific information.
ISSN:1440-2440
1878-1861
DOI:10.1016/j.jsams.2023.06.005