Medical Models of Health

Medical Models of Health
Scientist and health education have developed three main ways to define health

The Medical Models
The environmental model
The Wellness or holistic

The medical models main tenet is that health is the science of one or more of the “five Ds” – death, disease, discomfort, disability and dissatisfaction.

Followers of the medical model rely almost exclusively on biological explanations of disease and illness and tend to interpret disease and illness in terms of malfunction of individual organs, cells and other biological systems, e.g. liver disease, heart disease or sickle cell anemia.

Within the medical model, the health of the population is measured in terms of vital statistics which are data on the degree of illness (morbidity) and the numbers of death(mortality) in a given population.

Vital statistics include prevalence and incidence at which certain disease occur. These statistical measurements allow comparisons between population and also within the same population over time.
Medical Models of Health