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Contemporary issues in screening

Edited by Fred Paccaud and Gillian Bartlett
Public Health Reviews

Contemporary issues in screening © Kurhan / Fotolia​​​​​​​Screening is a key tool in the field of prevention i.e., looking for early signs of disease where intervention makes difference in outcome. As diagnostic tests and tools develop, there are ever more fields where screening is now and will in the future be considered as essential elements of preventive care both for individuals and populations. This series in Public Health Reviews provides an overview of several highly topical areas such as chronic renal disease, frailty in older people, lung cancer, and explores more general issues associated with developments in public health genomics and cardiovascular risk in children in low and middle income countries. There is also a timely reminder of the risks of over-diagnosis, and the need to balance harms and benefits within new and existing screening programmes.

Publication charges for this collection were funded by ASPHER. Articles have undergone the journal's standard peer-review process overseen by the Guest Editor, who declares no competing interests.

  1. Younger women at higher-than-population-average risk for breast cancer may benefit from starting screening earlier than presently recommended by the guidelines. The Personalized Risk Stratification for Prevent...

    Authors: Svetlana Puzhko, Justin Gagnon, Jacques Simard, Bartha Maria Knoppers, Sophia Siedlikowski and Gillian Bartlett
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2019 40:2
    Content type: Review Published on:

  2. Screening and treatment of hypertension is a cornerstone of cardiovascular disease (CVD) prevention. Hypertension causes a large proportion of cases of stroke, coronary heart disease, heart failure, and associ...

    Authors: Daniela Anker, Brigitte Santos-Eggimann, Valérie Santschi, Cinzia Del Giovane, Christina Wolfson, Sven Streit, Nicolas Rodondi and Arnaud Chiolero
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2018 39:26
    Content type: Review Published on:

  3. The growing numbers of refugees and immigrants from conflict-prone areas settling throughout the world bring several challenges for those working in the mental health care system. Immigrants and refugees of al...

    Authors: Lloy Wylie, Rita Van Meyel, Heather Harder, Javeed Sukhera, Cathy Luc, Hooman Ganjavi, Mohamad Elfakhani and Nancy Wardrop
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2018 39:22
    Content type: Review Published on:

  4. Lung cancer remains the leading cause of cancer mortality worldwide. A number of screening trials for early detection of lung cancer exist, using chest X-ray, low-dose computed tomography, or both. However, li...

    Authors: Stefanie Schütte, Damien Dietrich, Xavier Montet and Antoine Flahault
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2018 39:23
    Content type: Review Published on:

  9. A decision to undertake screening for breast cancer often takes place within the primary care setting, but current controversies such as overdiagnosis and inconsistent screening recommendations based on evolvi...

    Authors: Sophia Siedlikowski, Carolyn Ells and Gillian Bartlett
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2018 39:15
    Content type: Review Published on:

  12. Refugee populations have unequal access to primary care and may not receive appropriate health screening or preventive service recommendations. They encounter numerous health care disadvantages as a consequenc...

    Authors: Kim S. Griswold, Kevin Pottie, Isok Kim, Wooksoo Kim and Li Lin
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2018 39:3
    Content type: Commentary Published on:

  13. Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) is a public health framework approach used to identify and deliver services to those at risk for substance-use disorders, depression, and other m...

    Authors: Daniel Hargraves, Christopher White, Rachel Frederick, Margaret Cinibulk, Meriden Peters, Ashlee Young and Nancy Elder
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2017 38:31
    Content type: Review Published on:

  14. The prevalence of mental health concerns and risky health behaviours among young people is of global concern. A large proportion of young people in New Zealand (NZ) are affected by depression, suicidal ideatio...

    Authors: Felicity Goodyear-Smith, Rhiannon Martel, Margot Darragh, Jim Warren, Hiran Thabrew and Terryann C. Clark
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2017 38:20
    Content type: Review Published on:

  15. The concept of frailty as a health dimension in old age is recent and has its origin in the development of geriatric medicine. Initially an unformulated clinical intuition, it is now defined by a diminished ph...

    Authors: Brigitte Santos-Eggimann and Nicolas Sirven
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2016 37:7
    Content type: Commentary Published on:

  16. Cardiovascular disease (CVD), mainly heart attack and stroke, is the leading cause of premature mortality in low and middle income countries (LMICs). Identifying and managing individuals at high risk of CVD is...

    Authors: Pascal Bovet, Arnaud Chiolero, Fred Paccaud and Nick Banatvala
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2015 36:13
    Content type: Commentary Published on:

  19. Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the leading cause of death worldwide. Individual detection and intervention on CVD risk factors and behaviors throughout childhood and adolescence has been advocated as a stra...

    Authors: Clemens Bloetzer, Pascal Bovet, Joan-Carles Suris, Umberto Simeoni, Gilles Paradis and Arnaud Chiolero
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2015 36:9
    Content type: Review Published on:

  20. Overdiagnosis is the diagnosis of an abnormality that bears no substantial health hazard and no benefit for patients to be aware of. Resulting mainly from the use of increasingly sensitive screening and diagno...

    Authors: Jean-Luc Bulliard and Arnaud Chiolero
    Citation: Public Health Reviews 2015 36:8
    Content type: Commentary Published on: