Ministry of Health

Just as there was a shift from viewing disease as a state to thinking of it as a process, the same shift happened in definitions of health. Again, the WHO played a leading role when it fostered the development of the health promotion movement in the 1980s. This brought in a new conception of health, not as a state, but in dynamic terms of resiliency, in other words, as “a resource for living”.

For example, it is estimated that life expectancy has increased for Americans by thirty years since 1900, and worldwide by six years since 1990. …