Redefining Health in the 21st century
- cdekleva1
- Feb 8
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 30
Have you ever asked yourself what your ultimate state of health would be, or what health means to you? When asked, I suspect that a lot of folks would default to the simple definition we learned about in our overview for this week. I must be healthy if I'm not sick, right?
At some point, the definition of health in my mind has ebbed and changed too. I went to one of my favourite websites related to health-Health Canada-to find the definition that I like. In over a page worth of dialogue they define health as something that is complex, but yet seen different through the eyes of each individual person looks different. It does agree with the fact that being healthy or talking about health is associated with positivity, and something that we depend on for support in almost everything we do (Health Canada, 2025).
The part where it shifts into my world is the piece that speaks about the determinants of health. I've been aware of the determinants of health since nursing school-likely before then. Until I became a practicing healthcare professional, I couldn't have explained to you how they truly impact the health of individuals on so many levels.
To sum that up, health is a positive concept that refers to a place of wellbeing for an individual and is influenced by the person's perception of the world around them as influenced and impacted by the determinants of health. It is both a verb, an adjective, and a noun at times, but health is just a state of being and can't be taken away-it's either good or bad or somewhere in between but considering we have a whole system that "cares" for it, I'd say it's a big deal.
Another article I found when I searched the Athabasca library for a definition of health looks at definitions of health over the years and how they can be categorized. It suggests that the development of a definition of health requires a lot of research and time and looks at the potential for other elements of health such as the individual sense, population sense, the ecosystem, and achieving balance overall (Lerner, 2019).
When the World Health Organization (WHO) decided to further define health in 1948 as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (Constitution, 2025) they were closer, but the word "complete" presents an issue, in my opinion. It's not that all of the definition is wrong, but "complete" makes it seems like health is an all or nothing state and I struggle with that concept. When reviewing this definition in his 2017 article, Brook surmises that the previous definition of health is missing a piece about a person's level of tolerance (Brook, 2017). He further explains that since this definition was written, healthcare and the way it's provided have changed from more than a tertiary care model to a full assessment of prevention (Brook, 2017).
In other words, if you wrote in your care notes that someone was healthy and had a great blood pressure, the 116/75 couldn't tell you that your patient had no tolerance for different people and would go to work the next week and kill a coworker who had been talking about the topic of abortion and women's rights (Brook, 2017). He feels that if an individual or group preaches hatred, they can't also be considered healthy, which perhaps could be the piece in the WHO's definition (Constitution, 2025), about mental well being (Brook, 2017). The question might be-do people who hate their neighbours perceive that they have good mental health?
Huber et al. (2011) also noted the criticism for the WHO's definition, pointing out the word "complete" as an issue. What they pointed out, that I didn't express as well, is that trying to achieve this place of complete everything would leave someone constantly striving for a level of perfection that would, in itself, have a huge impact on the healthcare system and the way people receive that care (Huber et al., 2011). The second and more obvious criticism this group points to is the evolution of the world and discovery of so many additional illnesses beyond 1948 (Huber et al., 2011). Finally, they point to the grey area that the word "complete" creates because it is something that is very difficult to measure or achieve (Huber et al., 2011).
In the end, what I can see is that we need a new more diverse definition of health. Some of the articles talk about what that might be, but the WHO should endeavour to take this on
so their definition can be more representative of the changing shape of health and its care. If we define it better, then maybe we can help people get to their desired place of health in a realistic way.
References
Brook, R. H. (2017). Should the definition of health include a measure of tolerance? JAMA,
317(6), 585–586. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2016.14372
Constitution. (2025). World Health Organization. Retrieved February 7, 2025, from
Huber, M. (2011). Health: How should we define it? British Medical Journal,
343(7817), 235-237. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.d4163
Lerner, H. (2019). A Critical Analysis of Definitions of Health as Balance in a One Health
Perspective. Medicine, Health Care, and Philosophy, 22(3), 453–462.
Comments