Health Health Article

CONCLUSION

Health is clearly a complex, multidimensional concept. Personal or individual health is largely subjective. It is possible to be physically robust, to be "the picture of good health," and yet have serious mental or emotional impairment. Conversely, an individual can be profoundly disabled physically yet have an intact mind and be emotionally well-adjusted. So while many facets of health can be identified, the assessment or measurement of individual health must take them all into account. Economists can derive a single number—the net worth or gross domestic product—as a measure of the economic status of an individual or a nation. But there is no comparable one-dimensional measurement scale for the health of an individual, much less a nation. At best, public health professionals can create community or national profiles using crude health indicators like life expectancy; infant mortality rates; death or sickness rates from specific causes like cancer, heart disease, suicide, and homicide; or surrogate measurements such as use of drugs, (prescribed or over-the-counter) and spells of hospital care.

Health is, ultimately, poorly defined and difficult to measure, despite impressive efforts by epidemiologists, vital statisticians, social scientists, and political economists. The dramatic differences in levels of health among the nations of the world only challenge public health professionals to pursue global health standards.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century the principal causes of premature death and departures from good health were violence, including violent armed conflict; smoking-related disease; automobile accidents; and overindulgence in high-calorie foods that are ill-suited to modern, sedentary lifestyles. All of these are ultimately associated with human behavior, which is greatly determined by values. Only by adopting values that support a healthy lifestyle can people improve their overall health.

JOHN M. LAST

(SEE ALSO: Assessment of Health Status; Attitudes; Behavioral Determinants; Climate Change and Human Health; Community Health; Cultural Factors; Environmental Determinants of Health; Genetics and Health; Health Belief Model; Health Maintenance; Health Measurement Scales; Health Promotion and Education; Infant Mortality Rate; Lay Concepts of Health and Illness; Life Expectancy and Life Tables; Maternal and Child Health; Mental Health; Nutrition; Social Determinants; Sustainable Health; and articles on specified diseases mentioned herein)

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