What Is Health?
Health is a concept of well-being that includes emotional and physical well-being. It also refers to an individual’s capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. It is often measured in terms of the absence of disease or pain.
How individuals, researchers, and policymakers think about health varies widely. Some define it as a set of conditions for well-being, such as good nutrition, exercise, and adequate sleep. Others focus on preventing illness and injury. Still others measure health as the ability to perform daily activities in the context of family, work, and community life. Regardless of its definition, it is clear that health has a profound impact on our lives.
In the United States, a dominant view of health emerged during the 20th century that focused on overcoming illness and disability through medical science. This perspective on health was fostered by the development of well-baby clinics, services for the disabled, and national investments in biomedical research facilities and hospitals (Guyer, 1990).
The assumption underlying this definition is that an individual’s ability to function independently and enjoy a sense of well-being is related to his or her physiology and genetic endowment. The presence of a disease or an injury can be detected by scientific techniques, and these findings are the basis for a diagnosis. A person who is diagnosed as healthy can be declared to be unhealthy at any time because new technologies may discover the presence of a disease that earlier methods did not detect.
Other researchers have challenged this biomedical approach to health by proposing that an individual’s ability to function independently is related to his or her social and cultural context. For example, the social class of an individual has been shown to influence longevity in studies conducted in Britain. Social class is a determinant of health even after accounting for variables such as income, lifestyle behaviors, and access to health care.
The focus on health as a process rather than a state opens the door for research and interventions that go beyond specific diseases or behaviors. The field model of determinants of health encourages the identification of broad targets for intervention, and it invites the inclusion of perceptions of health in measures of community health. In addition, a broad target allows for the inclusion of factors that have been historically neglected in efforts to improve health. For instance, the environmental and economic factors that contribute to a sense of well-being have not received much attention in comparison with traditional biologic and epidemiologic measures of population health. However, these factors can be as important for improving health as vaccines and antibiotics. Moreover, these factors are generally easier to assess and can be changed with greater ease than clinical outcomes or behavioral changes.
Health is a concept of well-being that includes emotional and physical well-being. It also refers to an individual’s capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. It is often measured in terms of the absence of disease or pain. How individuals, researchers, and policymakers think about health varies widely. Some define it as a set of conditions for well-being, such as good nutrition, exercise, and adequate sleep. Others focus on preventing illness and injury. Still others measure health as the ability to perform daily activities in the context of family, work, and community life. Regardless of its definition, it is clear that health has a profound impact on our lives. In the United States, a dominant view of health emerged during the 20th century that focused on overcoming illness and disability through medical science. This perspective on health was fostered by the development of well-baby clinics, services for the disabled, and national investments in biomedical research facilities and hospitals (Guyer, 1990). The assumption underlying this definition is that an individual’s ability to function independently and enjoy a sense of well-being is related to his or her physiology and genetic endowment. The presence of a disease or an injury can be detected by scientific techniques, and these findings are the basis for a diagnosis. A person who is diagnosed as healthy can be declared to be unhealthy at any time because new technologies may discover the presence of a disease that earlier methods did not detect. Other researchers have challenged this biomedical approach to health by proposing that an individual’s ability to function independently is related to his or her social and cultural context. For example, the social class of an individual has been shown to influence longevity in studies conducted in Britain. Social class is a determinant of health even after accounting for variables such as income, lifestyle behaviors, and access to health care. The focus on health as a process rather than a state opens the door for research and interventions that go beyond specific diseases or behaviors. The field model of determinants of health encourages the identification of broad targets for intervention, and it invites the inclusion of perceptions of health in measures of community health. In addition, a broad target allows for the inclusion of factors that have been historically neglected in efforts to improve health. For instance, the environmental and economic factors that contribute to a sense of well-being have not received much attention in comparison with traditional biologic and epidemiologic measures of population health. However, these factors can be as important for improving health as vaccines and antibiotics. Moreover, these factors are generally easier to assess and can be changed with greater ease than clinical outcomes or behavioral changes.