Definition of health, dimension of health, determinants of health and health indicators

1. Dr. Ramesh Bhandari
Assistant Professor
Department of pharmacy Practice
KLE College of Pharmacy, Belagavi - 590010
CONCEPT OF HEALTH

2. Health
Health is a state of complete physical, mental
and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity.
Health is a dynamic state of complete
physical, mental, social and spiritual well-
being and not merely the absence of disease or
infirmity.

3. Dimensions/Aspects/Components of
Health

4. Physical Health
 Physical health means that an individual
should be physically fit.
 Body organs are structurally and functionally
in a normal state and there is a perfect
coordination between the organ and systems.
 Absence from Sickness or disease does not
mean that a person is healthy. Apart from
disease, a healthy person should not have
any physical handicap i.e. Crippled legs or
arms or defective eyes.

5. Physical Health
 It includes hygiene of different parts of
the body such as skin, hair, teeth, eyes,
ears, hands, feet, rest and sleep.
 Physical health means that an individual
should be free from sickness and
disease including communicable and
non-communicable diseases and there
should not be any deformity of the
body.

6. Mental Health
 Mental health is defined as the ability of
the individual to make personal and
social adjustments.
 These adjustments are concerned with
one’s daily life in relation to others.
 As there is saying that healthy mind
resides in healthy body.

7. Mental Health
 Physical health are interrelated with
each other.
 If a person is physically healthy he will
also become mentally healthy because
the mental health depends on physical
health and vice versa.
 Therefore good physical health is the
first stepping stone to mental health.

8. Characteristics of Mentally
Healthy Person
 A mentally healthy person feels
satisfied, happy, and cheerful.
 A mentally healthy person is able to
think for himself and take his own
decision.
 He has firm determination and self
control.
 He is not dominated by stress, fear and
anger.

9. Social Health
 Man is a social animal, he cannot live
individually. He have to depend on each
other to fulfil his basic needs.
 He is not a family member only but a
member of society, locality, city,
country or the world.
 Problem of individual is considered as
the problem of area, city or country.

10. Social Health
 Therefore necessity arose for creating
world organisations like WHO, United
Nation Organization etc.
 The health of the people depends
primarily on the social and
environmental conditions under which
they live and work.

11. Social Health
 Economic tensions, poverty,
unemployment and adverse social
relations greatly affect the health of an
individual.
 Custom and religious obligations affects
the social health of an individual as well
as community health.

12. Spiritual Health
 It is concerned with spirit or soul and is
that health which evokes the good
spirits and right things and keeps away
from bad activities.
 The body is guided by soul, if the
spiritual health is sound the bad
thinking is always controlled by inner
soul and the person hesitates to do bad
events.

13. Spiritual Health
 When the inner soul is overpowered b y
the mind then inner voice does not
come to guide the mind thus he/she
does not hesitate to do bad activities.
 All religions are concerned mainly
about the spiritual welfare.
 It is a supernatural power that
contributes to the health of an
individual.

14. Spiritual Health
 Spiritual health is necessary to follow
set of rules and regulations in daily life
e.g. Early to bed and early to rise makes
a man healthy, wealthy and rise.
 To do prayers in the morning and
evening are healthy sign of spiritual
health.

15. Determinants of Health
1. Individual Factors
a) Heredity
b) Life style
2. Environmental factors
a) Socio economic factors
b) Political will
c)Availability of health services
3. Other factors

16. 1. Heredity
 The state of health of an individual
depends on genetic characters
received from parents.
 Genes play a very important role in
the health and development of a
child.
 Many diseases are heredity like
Haemophilia, sickle cell anaemia,
Hypertension, Diabetes etc.

17. 2. Life style
 Life style of an individual plays a
great role in health.
 It may promote and maintain good
health as it may adversely affect the
health.
 Lifestyle includes many personal
activities like care of body, washing,
care of teeth, hair, nails and habits.

18.  If a person is having good habits, has
better attitude towards others he will
enjoy physical, mental, social and
spiritual health but if a person has
bad habits, he quarrels with others
and use alcohol, narcotics or other
drugs he will be a problem to
himself, community and society.

19. 3. Socio-economic factors
 Health of an individual depends on
the socio-economic factors which are
governed by set of rules and
regulations framed and accepted by
society.
 If they are financially sound then
there will be development in
education, housing, social relations
and hygienic conditions.

20. Poverty is the root cause of all
problems.
Poor nutrition, illiteracy, slums,
lack of basic needs etc lead to ill
health.

21. 4. Political Will
 As discussed before poverty is the root
cause of all problem, if political
decision are taken and policies are
framed then within no time all types
of facilities like fresh water, pacca
houses, pacca roads, electricity,
educational and medical facilities are
provided free of cost or reasonable
cost which will promote the health
status of those people living in slum.

22. 5. Availability of Health care services
It includes:
 Adequate supply of safe and drinking
water.
 Adequate supply of nutritious food.
 Maternal child health care and family
planning services
 Preventive measure against disease
and immunisation against infectious
diseases.

23. Health Indicators
A Health indicator is a measure designed to
summarize the information about a given
priority topic in population health or health
system performance.
Following are the health indicators:
I. Mortality Indicators
II. Morbidity Indicators
III. Health care services Indicator
IV. Others Indicators

24. Health Indicators
I. Mortality Indicators:
Crude death rate
Infant mortality rate
Maternal mortality rate
Life expectancy

25. Health Indicators
II. Morbidity Indicators:
Incidence rate
Prevalence rate

26. Health Indicators
III. Health care services
Indicator:
Doctor patient ratio
Doctor nurse ratio
Population bed ratio