Emphases on biomarkers (e.g. when making diagnoses) and pharmaceutical/ drug methods (e.g. when researching/disseminating population level interventions) in primary care evidence philosophies of health (and healthcare) that reduce health to the biological level. However, with chronic diseases being responsible for the majority of all cause deaths and being strongly linked to health behavior and lifestyle; predominantly biological views are becoming increasingly insufficient when discussing this health crisis. A philosophy that integrates biological, behavioral, and social determinants of health could benefit multidisciplinary discussions of healthy publics. This manuscript introduces a Philosophy of Health by presenting its first five principles of health. The philosophy creates parallels among biological immunity, health behavior change, social change by proposing that two general functions-precision and variation-impact population health at biological, behavioral, and social levels. This higher-level of abstraction is used to conclude that integrating functions, rather than separated (biological) structures drive healthy publics. A Philosophy of Health provides a framework that can integrate existing theories, models, concepts, and constructs.
The understanding that immunity could be strengthened in the general population (e.g., through vaccine interventions) supported global advances upon acute infectious disease epidemics in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. However, in the twenty-first century, global populations face chronic disease epidemics. Research demonstrates that diseases largely emerge from health risk behavior. The understanding of how health behavior, like the biological immune system, can be strengthened in the general population, could support advances in the twenty-first century. To consider how health behavior can be strengthened in the general population, the authors present a theoretical model of population health behavior. The model operationalizes health behavior as a system of functions that, like the biological immune system, exists in each member of the population. Constructs are presented that operationalize the specific decisions and habits that drive health behavior and behavior change in the general population. The constructs allow the authors to present parallels (1) among existing behavior change theories and (2) between the proposed system and the biological immune system. Through these parallels, the authors introduce a model and a logic of population-level health behavior change. The Adaptive Behavioral Immune System is an integrative model of population health behavior.
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