What is Health?

What is health? What does health mean to people? How do we make sense of health and experience it?

There are no simple answers to these questions. Health is complex, subjective and varied. Drawing on theory, research and contemporary debates, Ruth Cross explores the nature of health in depth and challenges our thinking about it. Moving beyond taken-for-granted assumptions, she gives the meaning of ‘health’ its due attention, exploring everyday perspectives as well as ‘expert’ medical, academic and policy understandings and approaches. In doing so, the book brings together different knowledge and expertise on health, also considering the inextricable links between human and planetary health.

This book is important for all those working in the health field, or training to do so, seeking a broad understanding about health and all its complexity. Introduction
Chapter 1: What is Health?
Chapter 2: Dimensions of Health
Chapter 3: Models of Health
Chapter 4: Determinants of Health
Chapter 5: Health as Wellbeing
Chapter 6: Health as Happiness
Chapter 7: Creating Health
Chapter 8: Health and Our Planet
Conclusion "This comprehensive and thought-provoking text analyses the complexity of health and its key determinants. It is wide-ranging in scope, extending from individual through to planetary perspectives, and is essential reading for all those studying or working in health-related areas."
Jackie Green, Emeritus Professor of Health Promotion, Leeds Beckett University, United Kingdom

"The author has done a fantastic job of unpacking the complexities and nuances of health through different perspectives and experiences of health and its determinants. The interplay between climate change and health is a brilliant way of stimulating food for thought as part of the concluding chapter on planetary health. Definitely a book I will read again."
Julian David Pillay, Professor of Global Health, Durban University of Technology, South Africa Ruth Cross is Course Director for Health Promotion at Leeds Beckett University.