What is Health in nursing perspective.ppt

1. Department of Public Health
University of Aberdeen
What is health?
Fiona Marshall

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. Who is the healthiest?

5. Defining health
• Official or professional definitions
• Popular or lay definitions.

6. Negative, Professional Definitions
• So called bio-medical or
scientific view of health.
• Health as the absence of disease.
• Health as the absence of illness.

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

8. 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”

9. Positive/Holistic, Professional
Definitions
• David Seedhouse set out 5 major
characteristics or qualities which define
positive ideas about health. Seedhouse (2001).

10. 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.

11. Lay beliefs - being healthy /
being ill
• 9000 individuals questioned:-
–Absence of disease.
–Physical fitness
–Functional ability
Blaxter (1995)

12. Health beliefs change
throughout the life-course

13. 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)

14. 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)

15. 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)

16. 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

17. “Health” is contentious
• Are the following people healthy?
– Tanni Grey-Thompson
– Rugby player
–“Petit” model

18. 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

19. 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.

20. Evans & Stoddart’s Model of
Health Determinants

21. 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.

22. 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.