Health Professionals Can Protect Water Quality: Tools for Educators, Advocates, and Practitioners

Background

The philosophy for this chapter is grounded by the definition of health promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO, 1948), and in the conceptual framework of determinants of health—both physical and social (Healthy People 2020, 2014). According to the WHO, “Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity” (1948, Preamble). In the US, the practice and education of health providers historically focused on the treatment of disease, or a “medical model”, but the WHO definition speaks to a more holistic state of health that results from determinants of well-being. HCPs must be attentive not only to the bio-medical aspects and health behavior of individuals, but also to the physical and social structures that shape human behavior and make holistic health possible. Physical structures include the built and natural environment, and social structures include cultural values and political systems. Together physical and social structures combine to drive and constrain community attributes. Will healthy or unhealthy behaviors prevail? Will social justice or inequity characterize the community? Will the population derive health from interacting sustainably with the natural world, or will their well-being succumb to a polluted and degraded environment?