There are millions of dollars spent on preventative health education programs and ‘getting the message out’ about the current in vogue issue – be it breast or prostate cancer, smoking, exercise or healthy eating. The message is useless unless action follows and it is for this reason that we have been actively chasing feedback from eDoc subscribers and members who have worked through the preventative health screen recommendations. We are not really interested in if you know what you should be doing. What interests us is the action that follows. Knowledge without action is like a grand speech to an empty room. It goes nowhere.
It is difficult to quantify action. eDoc is designed to stimulate simple changes – like increasing exercise to the recommended level, through to complex screening for memory or mental health issues should they be relevant. Over the years we have been operating we get steady feedback from subscribers about outcomes – usually when a diagnosis has been made that is life saving – the melanoma detected due to a long overdue skin check or the breast cancer picked up on a mammogram. Nobody has contacted us to say they are now doing their 30 minutes exercise a day and are no longer a couch potato. But we live in hope that for the thousands that have reviewed their comprehensive guidelines they make change for the better.
Gain the knowledge. Take action.