Potential Savings in Mexico from Screening and Prevention for Early Diabetes and Hypertension

This report summarizes an evaluation of the Mexican Institute of Social Security (IMSS)'s national preventive program, PREVENIMSS, which provides four major preventive care services: health education, nutritional information, disease prevention, and screening for highly prevalent diseases. IMSS conducted four yearly nationwide surveys from 2003 to 2006 in order to analyze the potential benefits of early screening for Type 2 Diabetes and Hypertension, focusing on estimating its effective coverage, or the proportion of people who actually used an effective intervention that produced a desirable health gain. The evaluation demonstrates that prevention is cost-saving for these particular conditions, and concludes that expansion of the program to young adults would result in increased health and economic gains.Diseases, Health Care