2.2 What Is Health?
Individual and Population-level Health
Health is commonly used to describe a person’s body and mind with regard to whether or not they are experiencing illness or disease. Assessing an individual’s overall health can be done in numerous ways, including but not limited to any or all of the following:
- presence or absence of injury, illness, disability, or disease which can be diagnosed through tests or observed by professionals;
- clinical measures and screenings, such as those for cholesterol, blood pressure, depression, or anxiety; or
- self-described health status.
Measures of a population’s health, on the other hand, involve using rates of illness—often referred to as morbidity—and death—often referred to as mortality—and includes health status and outcome measurements, like rates of infant mortality, prevalence of heart disease, and average life expectancy.
Diseases fall into one of two categories: infectious or chronic. Infectious diseases are diseases which spread from person to person or animal to human and are caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites and include illnesses like pneumonia or tuberculosis. Advances in medicine, sanitation, and other technology lead to more effective prevention and treatment of infectious diseases. Chronic diseases—diseases which develop and continue over long periods of time—include conditions like heart disease, stroke, cancer, and type 2 diabetes, and, though not contagious, have become a leading cause of death and disability (CDC, 2017).
Self-Assess Your Understanding
- Define health
- Define morbidity and mortality
- Distinguish between infectious diseases and chronic diseases
assessment of a person’s body and mind with regard to whether or not they are experiencing illness or disease; this can be done in a number of ways.
Any departure, subjective or objective, from a state of well-being. In public health and healthcare, morbidity typically encompasses disease, injury, and disability.
death; mortality rate means frequency of occurrence of death among a defined population during a specified time interval (e.g. females 50 to 59 years old)
diseases which spread from person to person or animal to human and are caused by bacteria, viruses, fungi, or parasites and include illnesses like pneumonia or tuberculosis
diseases which develop and continue over long periods of time; includes conditions like heart disease, stroke, cancer, and type 2 diabetes, and, though not contagious, have become a leading cause of death and disability.
