Traditional medical research has focused on the question: What are the causes of illness? Yet the cost of alarming increases in preventable chronic disease threaten to overwhelm health systems everywhere. To reverse this trend, conventional pathology-centric investigations must be balanced by responses to this 21st century question: What are the causes of health?

1. Salutogenesis
Discovering the Causes of Health

2. WE LIVE IN
PATHOLOGY-CENTRIC
WORLD

5. More than 8000 factors that cause
disease have been discovered by
medical science.
Meanwhile the growing burden of
chronic illness is overwhelming our
medical systems.

6. Changes in our physical and cultural environment
have fueled this burden of disease.

7. Why do we have a widely-recognized
word that refers to origins of
disease: PATHOGENIC, while a
similar term meaning origins of
health is relatively unknown:
SALUTOGENIC

8. More than 8000 origins of disease
have overshadowed perhaps 800
generators of health.
It’s time to discover 8000 ways to
cause health.
SALUTOGENESIS

9. Aaron Antonovsky coined the term
salutogenesis by combining Latin salus
= health and Greek genesis = origin.
Antonovsky focused on what makes
certain people resilient as they face
the stressors of daily life.

10. Antonovsky saw a continuum
rather than dichotomy.
Pathogenic Salutogenic
deterioration enhance health

11. What we look for affects what we find.
We need to change what we look for.

12. “We were saturated in medical school
with negatives, things to worry
about—bad news and diseases.”
Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH
Professor and Chair
Dept. of Environmental Health
School of Public Health, UCLA

13. “I learned a lot of pathology, and a
lot about medicines. We were taught
virtually nothing about health.”
Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH

14. When we understand the concept of
salutogenesis, we change how we see
health in our everyday lives.

15. The salutogenic orientation brings
balance to a pathology-focused world.

16. “…I had to begin to learn less about
disease and a whole lot more about the
embedded health in the world around
me if I was to make an impact.”
Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH

17. Many people cannot see how their
environment makes them feel.

18. They are unaware of what makes
them feel dis-ease…

19. …and often unable to analyze what
aspects make them feel better.

20. What makes a person resilient?
Rather than a pathology-centric
focus, we need to look upstream
to find the causes of resilience.
A salutogenic perspective will
reduce the costly burden of
medical services and treatments.

21. Why is this approach
outside the norm?

22. THE LEAP UPSTREAM
PATHOGENIC SALUTOGENIC
ORIENTATION ORIENTATION
GOAL better medical interventions  improve our natural and built
environment
FOCUS cure chronic disease  cause health
NORMS paternalism, entitlement  culture of active health
RELIES ON fixing parts of system  health asset development

23. passive active
consumers citizens
The quest for sustainability is not enough.
We must create resilience and abundance.

24. “Do no harm” is yesterday’s pledge.
We need to build a society that places
health at the center of every decision.

25. Vision of a Brighter Future
learning and research
focused on
causes of health
healthy
natural health-enhancing
environment built environment
HEALTH
healthy healthy
political systems CREATION
SOCIETY financial systems
health-centric healthy
medical systems state of mind
healthy
civic engagement

26. Major Historical Transitions
industrial information health
economy economy creation
society
ACTIVE
PASSIVE CONSUMERS PARTICIPANT
“PROSUMERS”
1750 1950 2000

27. photo credit: Flickr user reegone
“We are not creating health…
we cannot build an economy
based on medical care. Eventually
we have to grow things that add to
the authentic wealth of the nation.”
Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH

28. Lack of awareness of dismal, draining places…

29. …needs to change from a blind eye to a critical eye.

30. “…inactivity, depression and loss of community
have not ‘happened’ to us…We legislated,
subsidized, and planned it this way.”
Richard J. Jackson, MD, MPH

31. Where will you set the bar?
set a bigger agenda:
build a solid economic CAUSE HEALTH
foundation on the energy, influence the whole system:
capabilities and creativity of natural, human and
a healthy society. built environmental elements
ECONOMIC ASSET
INCLUDE REGENERATIVE
repair and improve
ELEMENTS
PRESERVE and SUSTAIN
“do no harm”
SURVIVE and FUNCTION

32. We invite you to visit CauseHealth.org
to add your ideas for advancing salutogenesis
in our daily lives.

33. “In the western world, the
biomedical perspective has
been the leading perspective and
has thereby made medical care
into a business industry.”
Alan Dilani has become widely recognized as the leader in applying
salutogenesis to creating healthy built environments. He emphasizes
the multiple dimensions of health, including physical, psychological,
emotional, spiritual and social well-being.
Alan Dilani, PhD,
Head, Research Center
Design and Health,
Sweden
www.designandhealth.com

34. www.CauseHealth.org
www.farrowpartnership.com