How is Health defined and What is it based on?
In general, the environment in which a person lives has a significant impact on his or her health and quality of life. Health is increasingly acknowledged as being preserved and improved not only via advancement and application of health research, but also through individual and societal efforts and sensible lifestyle choices. The social and economic environment, the physical environment, and a person’s unique features and actions are all important determinants of health, according to the World Health Organization.
The following are significant elements that have been discovered to determine whether people are healthy or unhealthy:
1.Salary and social standing: A person’s social status refers to their perceived social worth. It refers to the amount of respect, honour, assumed competence, and reverence granted to individuals, groups, and organisations in a community. Status is determined by generally held ideas about who members of a community believe has a higher or lower social value, in other words, who they believe has superior competence or moral qualities. The possession of many culturally perceived superiority or inferiority qualities determines status (e.g., confident manner of speech or race). As a result, status hierarchies are used to distribute resources, leadership positions, and other forms of authority.
These common cultural beliefs foster social stratification by making unequal allocations of resources and power look natural and fair. Status hierarchies appear to be universal in human civilizations, with those at the top receiving valuable benefits such as greater health, social approbation, riches, influence, and freedom.
2. Social support systems: The perception and reality of being cared for, having assistance available from others, and, most importantly, being a part of a supportive social network. These resources can be emotional (e.g., nurturing), informational (e.g., advice), or social (e.g., a sense of belonging); physical (e.g., financial aid) or intangible (e.g., friendship) (e.g., personal advice). The perception that help is available, the actual help received, or the degree to which a person is integrated into a social network are all examples of social support. Many people can help, including family, friends, pets, neighbors, coworkers, and organizations.
In certain countries, government-provided social assistance is referred to as public aid. Psychology, communications, medicine, sociology, nursing, public health, education, rehabilitation, and social work are among the fields that study social support. Many benefits for both physical and mental health have been connected to social support, however “social support” (e.g., talking about friends) is not necessarily good.
In the 1980s and 1990s, social support theories and models were widely studied in universities, and they were linked to the creation of caregiver and payment models, as well as community delivery systems in the United States and around the world. The buffering hypothesis and the direct effects hypothesis are the two main models attempted to explain the link between social support and health.
3. Literacy and education: Learning, or the acquisition of knowledge, skills, values, morals, beliefs, habits, and personal development, is facilitated by education. Education began as a means of passing along cultural knowledge from one generation to the next. Today’s educational objectives increasingly include new concepts such as student autonomy, critical thinking about offered knowledge, modern-day skills, empathy, and complicated vocational skills.
Literacy is defined as “certain ways of thinking about and practising reading and writing” with the goal of comprehending or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in a specific environment. Humans in literate civilizations have a set of activities for generating and consuming writing, as well as attitudes about these processes. Reading, in this view, is constantly reading something for a certain reason, and writing is always writing something for a specific purpose. The methods literacy is taught, learnt, and practised over the lifespan are always influenced by beliefs about reading and writing and its worth for society and the individual.
According to some researchers, there are two phases in the history of interest in the concept of “literacy.” To begin with, there was a time before 1950 when literacy was primarily defined as alphabetical literacy (word and letter recognition). Second, after 1950, literacy gradually became recognised as a broader concept and process that included social and cultural dimensions of reading and writing, as well as functional literacy.
4. Working conditions/employment
5. Social situations: The immediate physical and social setting in which people live or anything happens or develops is referred to as the social environment, social context, sociocultural context, or milieu. It encompasses the individual’s education and upbringing, as well as the people and institutions with whom they interact. The interaction could take place in person or via communication technologies, be anonymous or one-way, and not entail social equality. The term “social environment” encompasses more than just socioeconomic class or social circle.
The physical and social environment, which is a fundamental aspect in the study of environmental gerontology, is a determining factor in active and healthy ageing in place.
6. Environmental conditions
7. Personal health habits and coping mechanisms
8. Developing a healthy child
9. Genetics and biology
10. Services in health care
11. Gender
12. Culture