What is health?
A new definition of health is proposed as “the ability to adapt and self manage” in the face of social, physical, and emotional challenges.
Abstract
In a BMJ editorial in December 2008 Alex Jadad and Laura O’Grady called for a “global conversation” about how we define health ( BMJ 2008;337:a2900). This week Jadad and colleagues present the results of that conversation, initiated via a blog on bmj.com to which a good number of you responded (http://bit.ly/r6Usyh), and concluded at a two day meeting in the Netherlands in December 2009 (doi:10.1136/bmj.d4163). They propose a new definition of health as “the ability to adapt and self manage” in the face of social, physical, and emotional challenges. Why should we be interested in defining health? Because if health is the goal of healthcare and research, we need to know …