Resources to define What is Health

Constitution of the World Health Organization. In: World Health Organization: Basic documents. 45th ed. Geneva: World Health Organization; 2005. [Google Scholar]

This provides the widely used definition of health. Although in this assignment we are evaluating if this definition is still relevant today.

Haverkamp, Beatrijs, et al. “A Practice-Oriented Review of Health Concepts.” The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy: A Forum for Bioethics and Philosophy of Medicine, vol. 43, no. 4, 9 July 2018, pp. 381–401, https://doi.org/10.1093/jmp/jhy011.

This article explores the use of the definition of health in terms of different contexts. To be able to define health in different settings and contexts would be more beneficial than to have an overarching definition. This classification shows that health always both describes a condition and evaluates that condition at the same time.

Nordby, Halvor. ““The Analytic–Synthetic Distinction and Conceptual Analyses of Basic Health Concepts.”” Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, vol. 9, no. 2, July 2006, pp. 169–180, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11019-006-0002-7. Accessed 10 Feb. 2021.

The article argues that there's a big problem with trying to define health based on how we use language. Using "disease" as an example, it says that if we try to break down what we all mean when we say "disease," it turns out to be a tricky task. They argue that we can't use health in terms of context, an opposing view to the article above.

The preamble to the Constitution of the World Health Organization as adopted by the International Health Conference, New York, 19-22 June 1946; signed on 22 July 1946 by the representatives of 61 States (Official Records of the World Health Organization, no. 2, p. 100) and entered into force on 7 April 1948.

Schermer, Maartje H. N., and Edo Richard. “On the Reconceptualization of Alzheimer’s Disease.” Bioethics, vol. 33, no. 1, 10 Oct. 2018, pp. 138–145, https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.12516.

This article looks at the risk vs reward to reconceptualize disease and uses Alzheimer's as an example. The authors evaluate whether these new concepts are defendable against current theories of health and disease and whether they should be understood as disease or as an at-risk state.