https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health
This article is about the human condition. For other uses, see Health (disambiguation).
"Healthy Living" redirects here. For the publishing imprint, see Book Publishing Company.
Health is the level of functional and metabolic efficiency of a living organism. In humans it is the ability of individuals or communities to adapt and self-manage when facing physical, mental, psychological and social changes with environment.[1] The World Health Organization (WHO) defined health in its broader sense in its 1948 constitution as "a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity."[2][3] This definition has been subject to controversy, in particular as lacking operational value, the ambiguity in developing cohesive health strategies, and because of the problem created by use of the word "complete".[4][5][6] Other definitions have been proposed, among which a recent definition that correlates health and personal satisfaction.[7][8] Classification systems such as the WHO Family of International Classifications, including the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) and the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), are commonly used to define and measure the components of health.
See also
http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Health
Physical and mental health, and access to appropriate care in the case of illness or disability
Bodily and mental well-being, or health, is a basic need, without which we can enjoy little else in life. It is sometimes assumed that the availability of health-care is equivalent to meeting the need for health, but it needs to be recognized that if risk-factors are minimized, then there is less need for health-care while assuring the same level of overall health. Furthermore, many of the things we do in order to maintain our health (for example, healthy eating) are not strictly-speaking health-care. It is therefore essential to see health in a broad ecological and social context.
Relationships to other needs
“Clean air to breathe” “Clean water to drink, for cleanliness, for cooking and as habitat” “Sufficient and nutritious food, appropriate to one’s cultural preferences and taste” Clean air and water, and good nutrition, are essential for health.
“Being at home in the place where one lives” If one feels at home, one is more lively, one's vulnerability to disease agents is less, one's immune functions are likely to be enhanced, and one is able to recover from disease more quickly and completely. Being at home enhances one's self-healing capacities.
“Mobility to reach the places one needs to go, with appropriate modes of transportation” Mobility may be needed both by patients to reach hospitals, clinics and the like, and for doctors and healers to reach patients.
“Security from bodily, emotional, and mental harm; this includes security when one cannot take care of oneself (e.g., in infancy and childhood, in old age, or due to illness or disability)” Many of the harms from which one needs to be secure are harms to health. Hence, greater security directly contributes to greater health. Greater security can also indirectly contribute to health, by allowing people to focus their entire energy to overcoming disease, without being distracted by the need to defend themselves from other threats.
“Clothing appropriate to one’s cultural and individual preferences, and the climate” “Shelter/housing appropriate to one’s cultural and individual preferences, and the climate” Inadequate clothing and housing may lead to overexposure to environmental conditions such as cold, rain or sun, and thus ill health.
“Supportive relationships with other people, relationships that empower, that contribute to a gain in personal energy rather than an energy drain” Poor relationships with other people directly create distress, and contribute to mental disease. Since mind and body are closely connected, they also contribute to bodily diseases, or impede recovery from disease.
“Opportunities to learn anything and everything relevant to one's life” Learning about matters pertaining to health is vital to living healthily, preventing disease, and taking the right steps to recover from disease. As in all matters of education, there can also be miseducation, that prevents people from understanding what they need to know in order to be healthy.
“A meaningful livelihood that allows one to meet one’s other needs” A livelihood (meaningful or not) is needed in order to live a healthy life (e.g., with good nutrition, shelter etc.), and in most countries is also needed in order to have access to good health care. If one feels that one's livelihood is meaningful, one will also tend to be inclined toward more healthy choices in one's life in general, and contribute with greater joy to the healthy living of others.
“Participation in collective economic and political decision-making” Many decisions that either directly affect people's health, or that affect the quality of health-care, must be made collectively. Such decisions affect the risks of everyday life as well as the hazards in the case of extreme events such as earthquakes and floods; they also affect how hospitals are run, who gets access to medical services, and the like. Only if all social groups can have their voices heard can it be assured that such decision-making benefits everyone.
“Having enough time to relax, to think, to imagine, to enjoy life, to play, to be alone” “Spiritual connection with one’s deeper self and with a transcendent unity” “A freely chosen life direction” A healthy, well-balanced, and fulfilled life includes all of these aspects, without which one's full human potential cannot be attained. True health, which means wholeness, does not exist without them.
Understanding patterns of abundance and scarcity
Good health begins with healthy living conditions: clean air, clean and plentiful water, a sufficient, nutritious, and balanced diet, good shelter, and loving and supportive relationships. If widespread abundance is achieved in these areas, covered in other sections of NORA, most of the struggle against poor health will already be won.
Beyond these very basics, it is important to work toward health-promoting environments in other ways as well. It is of key importance to design cities and village such that there are few traffic deaths and it is fun and pleasurable to be outside, whether for recreation, chatting with friends, going on a walk, or getting somewhere by walking or cycling. Not only do people then engage in the physical exercise that they need, they are also more likely to feel at home in the place, and take an interest in the neighborhood.
Avoidable risks should be reduced, particularly where there is no conceivable benefit to exposure to those risks. This entails vigilance about food additives and potentially harmful substances in cosmetics, and designing workplaces (in factories, in mines, in offices, on agricultural fields etc.) such as to eliminate hazardous conditions. Regulations in these areas are often insufficient because of the clout of the food, cosmetics, and chemicals industries, and because employers consider it a cost to take care of the safety of their workers. Greater workplace democracy, whether through strong unions or through worker-ownership of companies, helps to ensure greater respect for the needs of workers. In many jobs, the health risks come not from overt injury, but from long-term stress; a more relaxed pace of work, and more focus on collaboration rather than competition would help to reduce stress and promote health.
Widespread education about matters pertaining to health is also important, including knowledge of basic hygiene, how to deal with common illnesses, stress-reduction techniques, massage and the like. Such education should also extend to knowing what questions to ask of doctors and other healers when being treated. Education can occur both in formal instruction and through all kinds of informal means, including broadcast and print media, the Internet, and street performances. The possibilities are endless.
It is only within the above context that curative healthcare can achieve its greatest potential. Large-scale immunization can then eliminate the most pervasive infectious diseases. Skilled and nurturing care for mothers and their infants can then all but eliminate maternal, infant and child mortality. The scourges that led to low life expectancies in the past (by today's standards, that is) can almost be done away with. Where they persist, they do so because of rampant injustice in access to food, clean water, and basic health services, and unequal exposure to a variety of hazards, many of them in and around hazardous workplaces.
Modern medicine has triumphed in combating diseases that have a clearly identifiable cause, such as viral or bacterial diseases, or where an offending organ can be simply removed, as in appendicitis. However, it performs poorly in those diseases where there are a host of risk factors but no clear cause, as in cardiovascular diseases and cancer. People with high blood-pressure are put on blood-pressure reducing medicines for the rest of their lives – this is not a cure, it just reduces symptoms. Modern medicine also fails to recognize the links between mental and physical health, and it altogether fails in treating mental illness. Mental illnesses have been increasing dramatically even while psychiatric drugs are supposedly leading to better treatments than in the past – what better proof of failed treatment than more disease with more treatment? The distrust of the “placebo effect” (the phenomenon that patients who believe they will get better often do get better) seems to have led to an effort to intentionally make patients feel bad, which reduces their chances of recovery. It can hardly be surprising, then, that more and more people are seeking treatment from “alternative” healers. The challenge to medicine is to find ways to consciously stimulate the “placebo effect” (which should more appropriately be called the patient's self-healing capacity). This could be done through a synthesis of different healing approaches, while fostering a supportive relationship between doctor and patient.
The dominant medical institutions, however, tend to block a path toward synthesizing the best knowledge from all healing approaches. This is partly because of a model of research and knowledge that validates only a very few methods of scientific inquiry (e.g., the “double-blind” method), and a refusal to recognize that medicine must be as much a social as a natural science (and thus should learn, for example, from anthropological and sociological methods of study). Existing medical institutions have invested heavily in expensive diagnostic machines (e.g., cat-scans), that must be paid off, and that are seen as the guarantors of their scientific approach. Methods of calculating payments validate the use of such machines, and invalidate deep listening by the doctor, or careful probing about a patient's social and psychological conditions which may do more to explain disease than any physical condition. Despite the fact that people clearly have muscles and muscle tension contributes to innumerable illnesses, massage is seen with suspicion, almost as something esoteric, instead of being incorporated into standard treatment regimes. Institutional change is required in order to allow integration of a holistic approach to treatment of illness.
This lack of integration also drives up healthcare costs. Iatrogenic disease (disease caused by the treatment of a disease) is a serious problem according to authoritative, established sources, and arises if doctors do not treat whole human beings, but focus only on diseased organs. By failing to recognize psychological or social causes of diseases, doctors fail to treat the real causes of disease (for example, those diseases caused by stress); if one such disease is “successfully” treated (or at least its symptoms alleviated), the stress will simply manifest in a different way in a different part of the body, leading to more expensive treatments.
Within this context, the high costs of medicine are a major driver of high healthcare costs. The costs of medicine are kept high as a result of patents, which are a government intervention to enable the establishment of temporary (usually 20-year) monopolies. The patents are supposedly designed to reward investments in research and development, but a large share of those costs are actually paid by government bodies (e.g., in US, NIH), which means that the public pays for research twice (first through taxes, second through monopoly prices). The R&D costs are dwarfed by advertising, especially high in the US where there is lots of direct-to-consumer advertising. A lot of the money spent on “further education” of doctors at conferences is also advertising for pharmaceuticals. Much of the R&D spending is for minor tinkering with drugs, so that when an old patent runs out, an insignificantly altered drug can be marketed as a “new” drug, at high price (with a new patent). The entire patent system furthermore leads to a focus on drug-based health-“care,” and a neglect of approaches that do not depend on drugs and do not allow patents to be claimed. There's also no incentive to take side effects of drugs really seriously; those in fact tend to increase revenue as patients take a whole cocktail of drugs. In countries where the government takes a pro-active stance to regulate drug prices, prices may be somewhat reasonable despite patent monopolies, but where the government does not take this approach, drug prices tend to be exorbitant.
Private health insurance can also drive up the costs of healthcare, as bureaucratic costs tend to increase as the insurers second-guess the doctors and vice versa. The insurance companies often present yet another barrier to the unbiased assessment of new approaches to treatment.
These and other tendencies have led to a seemingly perpetual increase in healthcare costs, even while life expectancies are creeping up only marginally in the core industrialized countries. Progress is supposed to lead to greater efficiency (reduced costs), but here what is touted as progress is clearly leading to reduced efficiency. Private (and often public) healthcare facilities try to compensate this trend by hiring nurses and other staff at as low salaries as they can, while making them work harder. Hence, many such facilities in the core industrialized countries depend increasingly on immigrant labor.
Where healthcare is performed for profit (for-profit hospitals, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical companies), the most profits can be derived from people who are sick almost all the time, who are constantly in need of treatment and drugs, but do not die until they are quite old. This is the direction we are heading in more and more countries of the world. Instead, what are needed are healthcare institutions that benefit when people are healthy almost all the time, and tend to die in old age after a comparatively short period of illness. The challenge is to design institutions aligned in this way.
Approaches to creating greater abundance
public health programs
community health initiatives
health education programs
public water provision
water filtration systems for small communities and households
complete streets
regulation of food additives; disclosure of additives present in food
research involving collaboration of doctors and patients
Health Commons: an approach to collaborative research and sharing of results
social science approaches to studying disease, and treatment of disease
approaches to healing disease that involve active participation of patients, that activate the patients' self healing capacities
WHO list of medicines that are the most essential and that are not patent-protected
laws that publicly funded research must not be patented
public health insurance
customer-owned health insurance
health insurance scheme for musicians in Austin, Texas
artabana (mutual aid system in Germany)
surely a lot more here
Research project at the Ostrom Workshop on the Health as a Commons
Literature
This section is to include fairly general literature relating to the institutions that affect abundance and scarcity in health and health care; literature pertaining to more specific topics will be included in more specialized pages.
Angell, M. 2004. The Truth about the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What to Do About It. New York: Random House.
Humber, J. and Almeder, R. (eds.) 1998. Alternative Medicine and Ethics. Totowa, NJ: Humana Press.
Illich, Ivan. 1976. Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health. New York: Pantheon Books.
Leape, L. 2000. Institute of Medicine Medical Error Figures are Not Exaggerated. Journal of the American Medical Association 284: 95-97.
Leape, L. and Berwick, D. 2005. "Five Years after To Err is Human: What Have We Learned?" Journal of the American Medical Association 293: 2384-2390.
Malpani, R. and Kamal-Yanni, M. 2006. "Patents versus Patients: Five Years after the Doha Declaration"
McKeown, T., Record, R. G., and Turner, R. D. 1975. An Interpretation of the Decline in Mortality in England and Wales During the Twentieth Century. Population Studies 29: 391-422.
Spiro, H. 1998. The Power of Hope: A Doctor's Perspective. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Wilkinson, R. G. 1996. Unhealthy Societies: The Afflictions of Inequality. London: Routledge.
Links
Links to organizations addressing health issues of the kinds addressed in this section to be added here. Links for more specialized organizations will be added on more specialized pages.
Links
http://www.dmoz.org/Health/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Health
Articles on the healthcare professions and the health sciences are contained in the: Category:Health sciences.
In humans, health is the general condition of a person's mind, body and spirit, usually meaning to be free from illness, injury or pain (as in “good health” or “healthy”).
http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Category:Health
Subcategories
Health and Safety
Health Grades
`` ► Health by continent (17 C)
► Health by country (228 C, 13 P)
► Health by individual (13 P)
► Health effects by subject (6 C, 13 P)
`*
► Health-related lists (9 C, 35 P)
`A
` ► Health and medical activism (2 C, 3 P)
► Health activists (10 C, 28 P)
► Alcohol and health (3 C, 11 P)
`C
` ► Children's health (6 C, 8 P)
`D
` ► Health deities (3 C, 5 P)
► Disability (25 C, 102 P)
► Health disasters (11 C, 17 P)
► Diseases and disorders (31 C, 27 P)
► Human diseases and disorders (9 C, 30 P)
` Animal
Alternative
Healthcare Industry
Medicine
Regional
Addictions
Aging
Beauty
Child Health
Conditions and Diseases
Conferences
Dentistry
Directories
Disabilities
Education
Employment
Environmental Health
`History
Home Health
Insurance
Issues
Medical Tourism
Men's Health
News and Media
Nursing
Nutrition
Occupational Health and Safety
Organizations
Pharmacy
Products and Shopping
Professions
Public Health and Safety
Publications
Reproductive Health
Resources
Search Engines
Senior Health
Senses
Services
Specific Substances
Support Groups
Teen Health
Travel Health
Weight Loss
Women's Health
`E
► Health education (20 C, 51 P)
`F
` ► Food and drink (41 C, 24 P)
`G
`H
` ► Health paradoxes (2 P)
► Hygiene (15 C, 97 P)
``I
``L
` ► Health law (11 C, 33 P)
``M
M
► Medical Imaging (empty)
` ► Men's health (5 C, 60 P)
Mental Health
► Midwifery (4 C, 191 P)
► Mountaineering and health (2 C, 14 P)
► Health movements (7 C, 18 P)
`N
` ► Nutrition (26 C, 221 P)
`O
► Health officials (4 C, 11 P)
► Medical and health organizations (45 C, 2 P)
``P
` ► People in health professions (44 C, 11 P)
► Health policy (13 C, 33 P)
``Q
` ► Quality of life (9 C, 48 P)
``R
` ► Race and health (1 C, 10 P)
► Health research (6 C, 28 P)
``S
` ► Health sciences (18 C, 75 P)
► Sexual health (13 C, 93 P)
``W
` ► Women's health (14 C, 74 P)
► Works about health (16 C, 4 P)
``Y
` ► Youth health (3 C, 4 P)
``Σ
` ► Health stubs (12 C, 82 P)
Pages
3
` 3D Slicer
`A
` AbilityMate
Access to Health
Access to Medicines
ActivMob Health Platform
Alexandra Carmichael and Jen McCabe on Participatory Medicine
All Trials
Alternative Incentives for Health and Pharma
Amar Kendale on Reshaping Electronics for Connected Health
Andrea Ippolito on the H@cking Medecine Initiative
Andy Kessler on Technology and the End of Medicine
Anna Betz
Anticommons in Biomedical Research
Apomediation
Aristotelis Kalyvas
Aternatives to Emergency Medical Services
`B
` Barry Bunin, Andrew Hessel, and Jonathan Izant on Open Source Drug Discovery
Ben Goldacre on Why Medicine Research Should Be Open
Biomedical Research Commons
BioStrike
Buurtzorg
`C
` Camille Kerr on Unionized Platform Cooperatives for the Caregiving Industry
Can Patents Deter Innovation
Care Revolution
Case for Commons Health Care
Clay Shirky on Health 2.0
Clinical Expert Operating System
Co-Creating Health Services
Co-op Models for the Production of Health and Social Services
Coming Up Short Handed
Commercial Open Source Biotechnology
Common Ground Health Clinic
Commons for Public Health - 2013
Commons Health Care
Commons Health Hospital Challenge
Commons of Health and Well-Being
Community Nursing
Community-Based Cooperative Healthcare
Competitive Intermediators
Consent to Research
Consumer Health Social Networking
Continua Health Alliance
Crowdfunding for Medical Expenses
Crowdsourcing Medical Diagnosis
Cura
Curēus
Customizable Open Hackable Prostetics
`D
` Declaration of Health Data Rights
Democratically Accountable Ownership Model for Health and Care Services
Desktop Medicine
DIY Health
DIYgenomics
`E
` EHealth
Emerging Patient-Driven Health Care Models
Enclosures of Essential Medicines
Equitable Access and Neglected Disease Licensing
Equitable Health Research Licensing
Evidence from Human Genome Research on Anti-Innovation Effects of Patents
Evolving Role of Open Source Software in Medicine and Health Services
EyeWriter Project
`F
` Fair Care
Fiji
From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State
From Open Source to Open Sourcing Digital Medical Devices
Funeral Coop
Fureai Kippu
`G
` Genetic Data Sharing Agreements
Global Alliance for Genomics and Health
`H
` Hacking Health
Harnessing Openness to Transform American Health Care
Health
Health 2.0
Health and Healthcare Institutions as Commons
Health as a Commons
Health Care Commons
Health Commons
Health Commons Hub
Health Data Cooperative
Health Effects of Electromagnetic Waves
Health Impact Fund
Health of Nations
Health Services 2.0
Health-Care-Sharing Ministries
How Open Source Software Helped Stop Ebola
`I
` In Control
Indie Bio
Innovation Inducement Prizes
InVesalius
`J
` Jamie Harvie
Jay Bradner on Open Source Cancer Research
Jay Bradner on Open-Source Cancer Research
Jermain Kaminski on the YouMeIBD Interactive Online Matchmaker for Patients
John Wilbanks on the Health Commons
John Wilbanks on the Implications of Open Health Data
Journal of Participatory Medicine
`L
` LavaAmp
Little Devices @ MIT
`M
` Managing the Health Commons
Marcy Darnovsky on Progressive Bioethics
Marisa Morán Jahn on CareForce
Medfloss
Medical and Health Commons
Medical Commons
Medical Device Co-ordination Framework
Medical Innovation Inducement Prizes
Medicine 2.0
Medicine 3.0
Medicines as a Public Good
Medicines Patent Pool
MedPedia
MiData Coop
Mumsnet
Mutual Aid Street Medics
`N
` National Alliance for Medical Image Computing
Needs Sharing
Nesta's Introduction to People-Powered Health
Netention
Networks of Care
New services for People Powered Health
Nicholas Christakis on Evolving Social Networks and their Future Applications
`O
` Occupy Healthcare
Occupy Medical
Open Access Emergency Medicine
Open Bioinformatics Foundation
Open Care
Open Clinical Trials
Open EEG
Open EHR
Open Electronic Medical Record System
Open Electronic Patient Records
Open Eyes
Open Hand Project
Open Health
Open Healthcare Framework
Open Innovation in Health/Science
Open Insulin Research Group
Open Medicine
Open mHealth
Open QRS
Open Source Bio-Amplifier
Open Source Computed Tomography Scanner
Open Source Dentistry
Open Source Dividends
Open Source Drug Discovery
Open Source Drug Discovery Attribution and Authorship Policy
Open Source Genomics
Open Source Hardware Electrophysiology
Open Source Hardware Medical Device Platform
Open Source Health Research
Open Source Herbalism
Open Source Insulin
Open Source Malaria
Open Source Medical Device
Open Source Medical Devices
Open Source Medical Implants
Open Source Medical Journals
Open Source Medicine
Open Source Prosthetics
Open Source Robotic Surgeon
Open Source Telemedicine
Open Source Yoga Unity
Open Spirometry
Open Surgery
Open Βionics
`P
` P2P Healthcare
Pardis Sabeti on Open Sourcing the Ebola Virus Research
Participatory Medicine
Pat Conaty on Social Cooperatives
Patient Innovation
Patient/Physician Cooperative
Patients Like Me
Peer-to-Peer Health Care
Peer-to-Peer Healthcare
Pharma Open Source Collaborations
Pink Army Cooperative
Popular Culture of Internet Activism
Preservation of Equity Accessible for Community Health
Prizes for Innovation
Programmable Self
Prospective Research
`R
` Raven
Robohand
`S
` Sage Commons
Self-Managed Healthcare Cooperatives
Sharing Pharmaceutical Research
Shimon Rura on the Open Research Exchange Project for Healthcare Patients
Social Blood
Social Clinics
Social Cooperatives as a Democratic Co-Production Agenda for Care Services in the UK
Social Health Movement
Social Networks for Healthcare
Social Pharmacies
Society for Participatory Medicine
Software Transparency in Implantable Medical Devices
Soil and Health Library
Solidago
Steve Case on Revolution Health
Street Medics
Strong Roots
Support Group 2.0
S
` SUSY on the CASA Employee-Owned Care Provider in Manchester
SysBorg
`T
` Talha Syed
Tim Hubbard on Open Access to Medicines
Time for Health Exchange
Towards a New Participatory Citizen Science Contract for Science Data Mining and Biobanking
Traditional Medicinal Knowledge Commons
Transparency Life Sciences
`U
` Ulrich Genicke on the MIDATA Health Data Cooperatives in Germany
Universities Allied for Essential Medicines
Unleashing the Potential of Ethical and Cooperative Health and Care Data
`V
` Voice and Choice by Delegation
`W
` Web 2.0 Services in Medicine
Whirlwind Wheelchair International
WikiPreMed Open Publishing Business Model
Woodbine Health Autonomy Center
Workers Health Assurance Groups
WorldVistA
`Y
` Yo Sí Sanidad Universal
`Z
` Zooniverse
Pages in Other Languages
Categories:
Main topic classifications
Personal life
Comments (0)
You don't have permission to comment on this page.