What has "Health" meant to me over time
- sflevac
- Feb 6, 2021
- 2 min read
Updated: Feb 7, 2021
One of my first memories is that of my great grandmother at a family reunion. She was an "old" but vibrant woman who had dealt with a lot of tragedy; after moving to Canada as a young adult, she lost her immigrant husband at an early age while raising four young children with no other family here while working a farm. I was about 4 and got to hold her well-worn hands. I loved her because she was family (my father's grandmother and we have to love our family I was taught) but she was old. My next memory of her was at her celebration of her life at the funeral parlour. I think this helped equate "old" with disease and death in my young mind. People who were alive but old were going to die. I was not going to grow old. (My great grandmother, lower left, with my grandmother (upper left), and her other two daughters.)
While in elementary school, we learned about the workings of our bodies and what is a healthy body is that it has everything working properly. It is important to understand my context: this was in the 70s and growing up in a middle class "white" neighbourhood in a suburban Northern Ontario town also inadvertantly fed into the ideas of health as being "whole".
In university, we were taught about physical/mental/emotional/psycho/social elements of health and "the continuum of health". This at the time was a very good foundation for my nursing career as we were taught that nursing is both a science (and my degree is a bachelor's of science in nursing) AND an art. Of course, we had to focus our learning of research, but also utilize the "humane-ness" of our craft in being empathetic, understanding, include human touch and employ listening skills when caring for patients, families and caregivers. The continuum of health meant that you could move along this continuum depending on your own health/diseases/age, etc. Also, being "whole" was not necessarily considered fully healthy, as experiences with those with less-able bodies showed me that many were more healthy than many able-bodied people.
I have also read about health being described as being in a state of "ease", as opposed to "dis-ease", which at a time also resonated with me.
While doing research for our local hospital that was at risk for closing only due to financial reasons, I learned a bit about the social determinants of health. Health Canada defines determinants of health as:
"the broad range of personal, social, economic and environmental factors that determine individual and population health. The main determinants of health include:
Income and social status
Employment and working conditions
Education and literacy
Childhood experiences
Physical environments
Social supports and coping skills
Healthy behaviours
Access to health services
Biology and genetic endowment
Gender
Culture
Race / Racism"
Health Canada goes on to say:
Social determinants of health refer to a specific group of social and economic factors within the broader determinants of health. These relate to an individual's place in society, such as income, education or employment. Experiences of discrimination, racism and historical trauma are important social determinants of health for certain groups such as Indigenous Peoples, LGBTQ and Black Canadians.
All of this post is to describe how my ideas/beliefs of health and wellness has developed and morphed over the years. My next post will critique the WHO's definition of health.
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