WHAT IS HEALTH
• QUICK WRITE:
• What do you think of when you hear
the word health.
• What did you do this summer that
may have improved your overall
health?
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.
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.
Who is the healthiest?
Defining health
• Official or professional definitions
• Popular or lay definitions.
Negative, Professional Definitions
• So called bio-medical or
scientific view of health.
• Health as the absence of disease.
• Health as the absence of illness.
Definitions
• Disease – presence of pathology or
abnormality in a body part
• Illness – feelings of anxiety, pain or
distress usually associated with a
disease
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”
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.
Lay beliefs - being healthy /
being ill
• 9000 individuals questioned:-
– Absence of disease.
– Physical fitness
– Functional ability
Blaxter (1995)
Health beliefs change
throughout the life-course
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)
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)
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)
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
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.