No. 76: The risk approach in health care: With special reference to maternal and child health, including family planning (Public Health Papers) 

As estimates of the risks of illness have increased in accuracy and the relationships between risk factors and outcomes are becoming clarified, new and exciting possibilities for their use in health care and strategies for Health for All are presented. The "risk approach" brings together these ideas and replaces traditional thinking about high risk. The measurement of relative and attributable risk provides the basis for a new approach which serves equitable health development and applications outside and inside the formal health care system. The risk approach can provide a quantified base for future action in the planning and management of health care, resource allocation, appropriate intervention, and use of technology.

This book describes the challenge arising from the new data and illustrates how these measures can be used, in particular, in maternal and child health care and family planning, where many of the new developments and preventive in character, and where continued interaction between health care systems based on primary health care and families and communities is called for. It presents the conceptual framework for action - the risk approach - and includes reference to its problems as well as its achievements. This book is intended for health care planners, managers, teachers and researchers to provoke experiment and discussion; it is aimed particularly at those for whom every advance in our understanding of health, however small, is a step towards improved health promotion and disease prevention.