What is Health in nursing perspective.ppt

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. Defininghealth
•Official or professionaldefinitions
•Popular or laydefinitions.

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.