What is health

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What is health?

• Fiona Marshall

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Aims

• Explore the notion of health from a variety of
  perspectives including professional and lay
  viewpoints related to age, gender, social class
  and culture.
• Appreciate that there are a range of views about
  the nature of health.
• Introduce the concept of models of health.
• Highlight the Evans and Stoddart model to set the
  scene for future lectures.

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Setting the Scene

• There are many words that we think we understand
  until we begin to question them.
• Health is one of them. Aggleton (1990).

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Personal health beliefs

• Think about the last time you experienced
  yourself as healthy.
• Jot down a few phrases that describe the feeling,
  and the context.

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Who is the healthiest?
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Defining health

• Official or professional definitions
• Popular or lay definitions.

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Negative, Professional Definitions

• So called bio-medical or scientific view of
  health.
• Health as the absence of disease.
• Health as the absence of illness.

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Definitions

• Disease presence of pathology or abnormality in
  a body part
• Illness feelings of anxiety, pain or distress
  usually associated with a disease

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Positive/Holistic, Professional Definitions

• World Health Organisation, 1947
• A state of complete physical, mental and social
  well-being rather than solely as absence of
  disease

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Positive/Holistic, Professional Definitions

• David Seedhouse set out 5 major characteristics
  or qualities which define positive ideas about
  health. Seedhouse (2001).

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Professional Definitions Positive/holistic views

• Health as an ideal state
• Health as physical and mental fitness
• Health as a commodity
• Health as personal strength or ability
• Health as the basis for personal potential.

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Lay beliefs - being healthy / being ill

• 9000 individuals questioned-
• Absence of disease.
• Physical fitness
• Functional ability
• Blaxter (1995)

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Health beliefs change throughout the life-course
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Lay health beliefs - Age

• Older people concentrated on functional ability
• Younger people tended to speak of health in terms
  of physical strength and fitness
• Blaxter (1995)

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Lay health beliefs - social class.

• People living in difficult economic and social
  circumstances regard health as functional the
  ability to be productive, to cope and take care
  of others. Blaxter Paterson (1982)
• Women of higher social class or with higher
  educational qualifications have a more
  multidimensional view of health. Blaxter (1995)

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Lay health beliefs - gender.

• Men and women appear to think about health
  differently
• Women may find the concept of health more
  interesting
• Women include a social aspect to health.
• Blaxter (1995)

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Cultural Differences

• White and African-Caribbean patients attached
  different meanings to High blood pressure
• African-Caribbean patients
• regarded it as normal and not as an increased
  risk of stroke/heart attack
• were less likely to take their medication
• Naidoo Wills 2001

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Health is contentious

• Are the following people healthy?
• Tanni Grey-Thompson
• Rugby player
• Petit model

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The causes or determinants of health

• So far we have discussed what we mean by
  health
• Now I want you to think about what
• may cause some people to be healthy while others
  are not

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Models of health

• From our discussion it appears that there are
  many factors that determine why some people will
  remain healthy while others do not.
• We could use a model to pull together these
  theories - to help us to understand how the so
  called determinants of health are interrelated.
• A model of health enables us to think about or
  present in a systematic way, the various complex,
  often interrelated ideas about the causes of
  health.

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Evans Stoddarts Model of Health Determinants
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Main learning points

• Health is conceived differently depending on
  whether you are a professional or not, where you
  live, what circumstances you find yourself living
  in, how old you are and whether you are a man or
  a woman.
• There are a variety of models of health which
  have sprung from social scientists and others
  attempting to define what health is and what
  causes health and ill health.

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References

• Aggelton, P. 1990. Health, Routledge, London.
• Seedhouse, D. 2001. Health the Foundations of
  Achievement. John Wiley, Chichester.
• Blaxter, M. 1995. What is health? In Davey, B.
  Gray, A. and Seale, C. (Eds) Health and disease
  A reader. Open University Press, Buckingham.
• Blaxter, M. Paterson, E. 1982. Mothers and
  Daughters. Heinemann Educational Books Ltd,
  London.
• Naidoo, J. Wills, J. 2001 (p147). Health
  Studies. Palgrave, Basingstoke.
• Evans, R et. al. 1994. Why are some people
  healthy and others not? Aldine De Gruyter, New
  York.