Spiritual_Wellness_Holistic_Health_and_the_Practic

310 Philosophical Foundations of Health Education
health and medical care, just as there is between health and programs by the Department
of Agriculture (nutrition, food safety, and so on) and the Department of Labor (occupational
health and safety) and many other agencies. Very importantly, both departments
would have separate budgets. In this way legislators, policy makers and, importantly,
the citizenry would (1) get a clearer picture of the functions of each department, (2) be
far less likely to confuse the terms or consider medical care synonymous with health,
and (3) be able to see the amount of resources devoted and the impact of each. However,
as long as health care continues to be subsumed under medical care, efforts at improving
health will not be optimized. Once the organizational and functional separation is
made, society will be in a much better position to enhance health. It also is quite likely
that once the two areas are differentiated, consistent with patterns in other countries
resources will be reallocated more rationally from medical care to health. Health educators
and public health professionals would benefit from this paradigm change. For it
is health educators who would be focusing on health and doing the things necessary to
make positive and cost - effective improvements in the health status of the population.
Support for this approach can be found in the recent excellent publication Health &
Health Care 2010 — The Forecast, the Challenge (Institute for the Future, 2000), which
mentions that the first shift should be from rigid adherence to the biological model to
an expanded, multifactorial view of health that expands and goes beyond the biological
model and includes social, mental, and spiritual as well as physical health. Review
of this publication not only highlights the limitations of our current paradigm but also
suggests new and exciting directions Such a change, including the necessary organizational
and functional changes suggested here, would go a long way toward a true
health care system.
REFERENCES
Anderson, G., & Hussey, P. S. (2001). Comparing health system performance in OECD countries. Health Affairs,
20 , 219 – 232.
Anderson, G., & Poullier, J. (1999). Health spending, access, and outcomes: Trends in industrialized countries.
Health Affairs, 18 , 178 – 192.
Anderson, G., Hurst, J., Hussey, P. S., & Jee - Hughes, M. (2000). Health spending and outcomes: Trends in
OECD countries, 1960 – 1998. Health Affairs, 19 , 150 – 157.
Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. (1979). Healthy People, the Surgeon General ’ s Report on Health
Promotion and Disease Prevention . Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
Institute for the Future. (2000). Health & health care 2010: The forecast, the challenge . San Francisco:
Jossey - Bass.
Lamarche, P. (1995). Our health paradigm in peril. Public Health Report, 110 , 556 – 560.
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). (2000). OECD Health Data 2000 . Paris:
OECD.
Sigerist, H. E. (1946). The university at the crossroads: Address & essays . New York: Henry Schuman.
Terris, M. (1986). What is health promotion? Journal of Public Health Policy , 7, 147 – 151.