As the rising costs of healthcare continues to soar, we as consumers are continually looking for different ways to ease this financial burden for ourselves.

According to Understanding Health Policy, if an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, then replacement of expensive end-state treatment with low-cost prevention would appear to be an ideal candidate for the painless cost controller award.

What this means is that it may be easier and cheaper to prevent a disease rather than have to treat a person once they have the disease.

Two of our area’s local hospitals offer free health screens to the public.

King’s Daughters Medical Center offers a calender of events such as stroke and vascular screenings, prostate cancer screenings, and skin cancer screenings.

King’s Daughters Medical Center has these events listed on their website with event details such as type of event, date, time, place, and contact information for the hospital if someone has any questions.

St. Mary’s Medical Center has free screenings that are made available to the public as well.

Some of these services include:

cardiac/vascular screenings, cervical cancer screenings, and wellness profiles.

St. Mary’s Medical Center offer information about these screenings on their website as well as in the local newspaper.

These preventive screens reduce health care spending in the long run.

According to Understanding Health Policy, primary prevention through public health action can be enormously effective in reducing the burden of human suffering and the cost of treating disease.

We, as members of the community, need to take advantage of these free health screenings in order to help drive down the cost of healthcare and detect and treat a disease in its early stage.

Chassidy Sharp

Ironton