Читать книгу Contemporary Health Studies - Louise Warwick-Booth - Страница 55

There are several reasons why it is important to look at different perspectives about health – both theoretical perspectives and lay perspectives. Firstly, appreciating different understandings of health may help towards understanding why people behave in certain ways when it comes to their health (Bishop and Yardley, 2010; Downey and Chang, 2013). This, in turn, can influence the way in which interventions intended to improve health are designed, communicated and implemented. As Earle (2007a) argues, anyone concerned with trying to change or influence health needs to understand what people mean when they talk about health. Secondly, in terms of health promotion we need to be clear about what it is we are actually trying to promote (health promotion is explained and analysed in chapter 7).

Thirdly, it is important because, as Entwistle et al. (1998) argue, lay perspectives can complement ‘expert’ perspectives and add to knowledge and understandings. As such they should be incorporated into, for example, health-care provision and also research into health. Understanding what health is about is crucial to researching it (Earle, 2007a). If we don’t know what we mean by the term ‘health’ how can we investigate its existence and meaning? Parallels between lay and expert understandings do exist with regard to some things; for example, in terms of how stress is conceived and understood (Clark, 2003) but this is not always the case. Differences in understandings have been found in relation to a range of health-related phenomena such as, for example, the body (Nettleton and Watson 1998). Finally, Schoenberg et al. (2005) point out the need to take people’s views into account in terms of influencing policy and programmes (in health) that are appropriately designed and sustainable.

As Duncan (2007: 93) argues, ‘we can assume nothing about the nature of health’ – it is contested, varied and changing. In addition, in order to understand health we need to take into consideration a variety of different perspectives to avoid having a narrow, constrained idea about what health is. Drawing on different disciplines and giving due consideration to lay perspectives can aid and enhance our understandings about health. In addition, Green et al. (2019) argue that trying to come up with a working definition of health can provide a basis for practice in promoting health – after all, as pointed out earlier, we need to have at least an idea of what it is we are trying to promote! Definitions of health therefore have implications for a range of things including theory, practice, policy and promoting public health (Marks et al. 2015). In a special issue of the Journal of Health Psychology, published in 2003 on the topic of health concepts, the editor at the time, Flick, argued that there were still a lot of ‘open questions and unresolved problems’ when it came to addressing the main issues (Flick, 2003: 484). Flick summarized these as the variety of health concepts that are encountered in everyday life and through professional practice. Now, several years later, it seems that the same challenges remain. Lawton (2003: 32) argued that more work needs to be done, the reason being that the ‘contexts within which health (is) defined and experienced are constantly shifting and changing’. This argument still stands today.