PRISMA beyond psycho-oncology

Prevention is not only about what is useful to do. It is also about the way a person relates to their own health.

PRISMA identifies the code through which a person relates to prevention, in order to understand which approaches are most likely to support their engagement with the programmes already available.

Do all women experience menopause in the same way?

Of course not. A natural menopause, accompanying a new stage of life, is different from one induced for therapeutic reasons. And even faced with the same experience, each woman may live it and handle it differently.

Here PRISMA applies the same principle the method is built on: understanding how a specific health event meets the history, the context and the personal code of the person living through it.

Because the same biological change does not necessarily produce the same experience.

PRISMA does not set out to explain every aspect of a person's life. It can be useful when, faced with a concrete goal or a change, sound tools and pathways exist but do not necessarily work the same way for everyone.

Giving up smoking. Changing how you eat.

A diet, for instance, may be scientifically sound and perfectly compatible with someone's way of life, and still be hard to keep to over time. Because food is not only nutrition: for some people it can mean care, reward, belonging or control.

PRISMA works to identify the code through which that person relates to that specific area, in order to see which approaches stand the best chance of working for them.

Yes.

More and more companies run prevention programmes and initiatives for their employees' health. But a programme addressed to many people is not necessarily experienced and followed in the same way by all of them.

A stop-smoking pathway, for example, may be scientifically sound, yet smoking can carry a different meaning for each person: a break, a moment of company, a reward, or a habit deeply woven into daily life.

PRISMA can help identify these differences and design more targeted programmes.

Depending on the goal, the method can also draw on group formats, such as focus groups, to understand how people relate to a specific health or prevention topic.