Preventive Care Editor
James Whitfield holds a Master of Public Health from Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School. As a former epidemiological researcher, he brings a data-driven approach to preventive health, cardiovascular risk assessment, and population health strategies.
South Korea diagnoses stomach cancer at nearly triple the global rate, and it built a national biennial endoscopy program to catch it early. A newer body of randomized-trial evidence points at a different strategy — eradicating the bacterium that starts the disease in the first place.
A Cochrane review found general health checks do not reduce mortality, yet Korea's national screening program shows real cancer-mortality reductions. The difference lies in what the program actually bundles together, not in national character.
Acute inflammation heals injury and clears infection. Chronic low-grade inflammation does neither. It is now implicated in cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, neurodegeneration, and the biological process of aging itself.
A simple ratio of two tape-measure numbers predicts cardiovascular death more reliably than the BMI on your medical chart. Recent meta-analyses suggest waist-to-hip ratio belongs at the front of every preventive screening, not buried in the supplementary appendix.
Roughly one in five adults carries elevated lipoprotein(a), an inherited particle that drives heart attack and aortic stenosis risk independently of LDL — and a single lifetime test is enough to know.
Type 2 diabetes does not arrive overnight. It is the end point of a slow metabolic drift that begins years — sometimes decades — before a fasting glucose test catches it. The earlier markers are there to see, if you know to look for them.
Blood pressure is the most measured vital sign in medicine, yet most people cannot explain what their numbers actually mean. That knowledge gap has real consequences.
Heart disease remains the world's leading killer, but the majority of cardiovascular risk factors are modifiable. Understanding which levers you can pull makes prevention actionable.
The fat you can't see — wrapped around your liver, kidneys, and intestines — may be the single most dangerous tissue in your body. Here's what the science says about visceral adiposity.