What is Health?
Health is more than the absence of disease. It encompasses physical, mental and social wellbeing. Healthy people are able to cope with everyday activities and to adapt to their surroundings. A lack of disease is a desirable state, but it does not define health, it is not a criterion for health, and it alone is not sufficient to produce health.
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being,
and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."
- World Health Organization
An individual’s health does not occur in isolation. Rather, many factors combine together to affect the health of individuals and communities. These factors include social, cultural, economic and physical environments, individual behavior, and biology. Together, these factors are known as the “determinants of health” and they describe where we live, how we live, and who we live among. Examples of health determinants include housing standards and suitability, employment and education prospects, income and wealth distribution, access to health care resources, clean and safe water and food, relationships with family and friends, pollution, and personal safety.
The model below presents the determinants of health as a series of overlapping spheres that affect the health of the individuals at the center of the figure. While the model is useful in showing how many different types of health determinants affect an individual, it does not show the complex interactions that exist between the determinants themselves.
Source: G Dahlgren and M Whitehead, Policies and strategies to promote social equity in health, Institute of Futures Studies, Stockholm, 1991