Health and healthy lifestyle
Health and healthy lifestyle (health, healthy, healthy life, healthy lifestyle)
What is this domain – and what does it tell us about wellbeing?
The distinction between ‘health’ and ‘wellbeing’ is not always clear. Many argue that health should be defined as being present only when a person has a good level of overall wellbeing, meaning a good quality of life overall, rather than simply based on the absence of specific disease or illness. Reflecting this, in some cases, health is defined as being present only when there is a state of wellbeing. The World Health Organisation, for example, defines health as a state of ‘complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity‘. Some argue this should be expanded to include environmental wellbeing, with human health only considered to be achieved if people are living good lives and living in ways that support and sustain environmental and planetary wellbeing (see for example Wang et al. (2023).
Others argue that defining health as only being present when a person has high wellbeing is over-reaching and risks medicalising all aspects of life (see Schramme 2023 for a useful overview of this debate). From the perspective of a wellbeing framework, it is useful to consider health as a contributor to wellbeing, as examining whether people are living healthy lifestyles and able to experience positive physical and mental health enables you to better identify whether changes in wellbeing are being driven by changes in health, or by changes in other aspects of life such as standard of living, or safety. As is the case with all things related to wellbeing, there are strong inter-relationships between all these things.
A person’s health – including both physical and mental health – can have an important influence on their wellbeing. For this reason, many wellbeing frameworks include a domain examining health of the population. Health domains typically include indicators of health outcomes and/or engagement in healthy behaviours. Health outcomes mean things like how many preventable illnesses or deaths are occurring per 1,000 population, average lifespan, and overall physical and mental health. Engagement in healthy behaviours includes measures of engagement in physical activity, healthy eating, and preventive health checks.
Interpretation is important when it comes to measuring the association between a person’s health and their wellbeing. In particular, not all people with a short or long term health condition will have poor wellbeing. Those who are able to manage their health conditions well, with the support of good health services, can have very high wellbeing. Additionally, having a disability does not equate to having poor health, and the two should not be confused. Many people live with a disability that affects their access to day to day activities, but have excellent health. For example, a person who has profound hearing loss may have no significant health issues through their lifespan, but experience barriers to accessing some typical experiences because those experiences are not made accessible to people with little or no hearing.
Connections to other domains
Health is sometimes combined in a domain with personal wellbeing or with safety, or is included as part of a domain called ‘human capital’ which includes health, skills, and education in a single domain. Access to health services is sometimes included in the ‘health’ domain, and sometimes measured as part of a domain focused on access to different types of services and infrastructure.
Indicator options
- Engagement in preventative health checks
- Physical activity levels
- General health
- Incidence of specific health problems or causes of death (illness, disease, injury, accidents)
- Healthy eating
- Psychological distress
- Mental health
- Years of life lost to avoidable illness and injury
- Life expectancy
- Rates of overweight and obesity
- Hospital admissions per head of population
- Number of health professionals per head of population
- Access to health services
- Private health insurance rates
- Use of medical services per head of population
References