Preventive Medicine’s Identity Crisis

What is preventive medicine? Specifically, what is the specialty of preventive medicine, and how should it best be described? The specialty of preventive medicine is poorly understood, not only by the medical profession and the general public, but even among some of its practitioners. Currently, there is no unifying, vernacular explanation of the specialty of preventive medicine, to its detriment. This paper presents the argument that preventive medicine is the medical specialty for public health, which should be the preferred identity for the specialty.

The American Board of Preventive Medicine defines preventive medicine as “the specialty of medical practice that focuses on the health of individuals, communities, and defined populations.”1

The Board further separates its specialty into three categories “that emphasize different populations, environments, or practice settings: aerospace medicine, occupational medicine, and public health and general preventive medicine.” For the purposes of this paper, preventive medicine refers to the latter category, as the authors believe aerospace and occupational medicine are more naturally defined and do not suffer from the same identity crisis as general Preventive Medicine…