What is Health ? Definition, Benefits

Health is a broad con­cept that includes a broad range of mean­ing that ranges from nar­row tech­ni­cal def­i­n­i­tions to all embrac­ing philo­soph­i­cal def­i­n­i­tion. Health is often described as devoid of ill­ness and as a state of well being. These are cre­at­ed and main­tained by a set of fac­tors which are known as deter­mi­nants of health. Dif­fer­ent pop­u­la­tion growth has dif­fer­ent has sta­tus for exam­ple if we take the case of life expectan­cy as a indi­ca­tor of health of a per­son born in Japan has aver­age life group has dif­fer­ent health sta­tus for exam­ple if we take the case of life expectan­cy as a indi­ca­tor of health of a per­son born in Japan has an aver­age life expectan­cy of 88 years where as Indi­an life expectan­cy is 68.5 6 year. If we con­sid­er only Indi­ans then form and it is 67.3 years and for women it is 69.6 years. 

Defining health

Accord­ing to World Health Organ­i­sa­tion health is a state of com­plete phys­i­cal men­tal and social well-being and not mere­ly the absence of dis­ease or infirmity. 

In the con­text of med­ical Anthro­pol­o­gy David land defined health as a con­di­tion of an organ­ism that per­mits it to adapt to its envi­ron­men­tal sit­u­a­tion with rel­a­tive min­i­mal pain and dis­com­fort achieve at least some phys­i­cal and phys­i­cal grat­i­fi­ca­tion and pos­sess­es a rea­son­able prob­a­bil­i­ty of survival. 

Health is not just the phys­i­cal well being of an indi­vid­ual but also the social emo­tion­al and cul­tur­al well being of the whole coun­try in which each indi­vid­ual is able to achieve their full poten­tial as a human being there­by bring­ing about the total valv­ing of their community. 

Health disparity health outcome and health inequality

A health dis­par­i­ty is a dif­fer­ence that is close­ly linked with social eco­nom­ic and or envi­ron­men­tal dis­ad­van­tage in achiev­ing health or health outcomes. 

Health dis­par­i­ties adverse­ly affect group of peo­ple who have sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly expe­ri­enced gen­der opti­cals to health based on racial group, reli­gion, eco­nom­ic, cul­tur­al gen­der, age, sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion etc. A health dis­par­i­ty is the dif­fer­ences in the inci­dence and preva­lence of health con­di­tions and health sta­tus between groups based on race, gen­der, social eco­nom­ic sta­tus, dis­abil­i­ty sta­tus etc. Health out­come is the changes in health that results from Major of spe­cif­ic Health Care invest­ments or inter­ven­tions. It is the change in the health of an indi­vid­ual group or com­mu­ni­ty which is attrib­ut­able to an inter­ven­tion or a series of interventions. 

For exam­ple immu­niza­tion pro­gramme has bought down infant mor­tal­i­ty con­sid­er­ably in the last 15 years. 

For exam­ple Niti Aayog 2020 data shows in 2004 was 68 and in 2016 it is 34.

Immu­niza­tion is the med­ical inter­ven­tion and reduc­tion in IMR is the health out­come. Health inequal­i­ty is observ­able health dif­fer­ence is between sub­groups with­in a giv­en pop­u­la­tion it can be mea­sured and mon­i­tored. These are unjust and avoid­able dif­fer­ences in peo­ple’s health sta­tus between sub­groups health inequal­i­ties are against the prin­ci­ple of Social Jus­tice because they are most­ly avoidable.