Environments for Health

'John Macdonald once again turns the traditional approach to health care on its head. Instead of merely diagnosing and managing disease, he urges health services and indeed society to foster health ... and articulates a vision of a health promoting a salutogenic society'. Dimity Pond, School of Medical Practice and Population Health, University of Newcastle, Australia The vast proportion of cash spent on health care by governments and individuals in the world is spent on systems that are based on a more or less Westernized acute care model. The imbalance of these systems, with their overemphasis on cure, as opposed to care and prevention or maintenance of health, is well documented. Salutogenic health care takes a holistic view of the individual as part of a social and environmental continuum rather than as an isolated packet of symptoms, and seeks to reassess the very meaning of health. There are some indications that we, as a global culture, are moving towards this new salutogenic model, but the speed of the movement has to be accelerated. This book sets out to chart the main steps of this movement and to indicate some of the ways of thinking and action which can help form new ways of approaching health care.