Today, health and wellness professionals focus on disease and problems—in other words, on what’s wrong (negative health). Wouldn’t you rather focus on positive health or on what’s right?
Health Today
Health today focuses on disease: risk reduction, avoidance, prevention, and treatment of disease, infirmity, and disability. This focus stems, no doubt, from medicine and its focus on pathogenesis, the study of the origin of disease. In a pathogenic model, health is measured by the incidence of disease or health-related problems. Success in the pathogenic model is measured by avoiding or eliminating problems, diseases, and premature death.
Health is often depicted as a continuum, with one end being premature death and the other being wellness. The mid-point of the continuum is usually described as a neutral point where no discernible illness or health can be detected. Suppose success in the pathogenic model is avoiding or eliminating problems or diseases. In that case, success does not create a state of wellness but a point where no discernible illness or wellness exists. The betterment of health or the movement towards wellness would then require deliberate, specific, concrete actions.
The necessity of taking deliberate, concrete action to achieve optimal health, positive health, or high-level wellness would be consistent with what researchers have found in other areas. Researchers have shown that eliminating negatives alone does not, in and of itself, create positive conditions. Some examples that demonstrate what I am saying would include:
• Herzberg showed that eliminating dissatisfaction does not create satisfaction
• Compton showed that eliminating depression does not create joy
• Seligman showed that mental health was not the mere absence of mental illness
• Becker and colleagues showed that ending disease does not create positive health
Instead of aiming for a return to neutral or the status quo, focusing on positive health moves our focus towards outcomes that exceed our expectations, in other words, our idealized outcomes.
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Positive Health
Positive health has its roots in the salutogenesis model. Salutogenesis provides a focus and methodology to discover and develop the causes or origins of positive health. Salutogenesis complements pathogenesis by working to optimize health and well-being through continuous and never-ending improvement. Salutogenesis involves adding positive actions, opportunities, conditions, and outcomes to move us beyond the neutral point to higher, positive levels. Positive health is a deliberate, consciously created dynamic state. Positive health has also been described as well-being, thriving, or flourishing.
A supportive, nurturing, and encouraging environment must be consciously and thoughtfully developed and continuously improved to achieve and continually improve positive health. This supportive and nurturing environment is necessary in the behavior change process. Positive states are created through deliberate, conscious effort and action. To develop positive states, specific efforts must be taken that go beyond eliminating health risks and problems. These particular efforts need to be supported through the use of the following 9 Es and 1 C:
- Engagement
- Education
- Empowerment
- Effectiveness
- Enablement
- Evaluation
- Emotions
Energy - Expectations
Comprehensive
Use these 9 Es and 1 C in your worksite wellness program to help your employees achieve positive health.
If you are interested in reading more, consider these references:
Antonovsky, A. (1979) Health, stress and coping. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.Becker, C. M., Dolbier, C.L., Durham, T., Glascoff, M. A., & Adams, T.B. Development and preliminary evaluation of the validity and reliability of a positive health scale. (2008). American Journal of Health Education, 39(1), 34-41. Becker, C. M.
Moore, J., Whetstone, L., Glascoff, M., Chaney, E., Felts, M., & Anderson, L., (2009). Validity Evidence for the Salutogenic Wellness Promotion Scale (SWPS). American Journal of Health Behavior, 33(4), 455-465. Becker, C., Glascoff, M., & Felts, W. (2010) Salutogenesis 30 years later: Where do we go from here? International Electronic Journal of Health Education, 13, 25-32.
Compton, W. C. (2005). Introduction to positive psychology. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Dunn H. L. (1961). High-level wellness: A collection of twenty-nine short talks on “High-level wellness for man and society.” Arlington, VA: R.W. Beatty Co. Herzberg F. (2003). One more time: How do you motivate employees? Harvard Business Review, 81(1), 86-96. (Original work published 1968).
Seligman, M. E. P. (2008). Positive health. Applied Psychology, 57(s1), 3-18.
Creating Positive Health
Using a positive health approach will add value to your worksite wellness program. I invite you to let me help you create your effective, successful, and sustainable wellness program. I specialize in mentoring worksite wellness program coordinators and creating Done With You worksite wellness and well-being programs.