don's report archive

by Donald B. Ardell, Ph. D.

Wellness in the Headlines
(Don's Report to the World)

The World Health Organization (WHO) is the directing and coordinating authority for health within the United Nations system. It provides leadership on global health matters. Its agenda includes health research, norm and standard setting, developing evidence-based policy options, providing technical support to countries and monitoring and assessing health trends. One of the best-known statements regarding the nature of health was promulgated by WHO. It is THE worldwide definitional standard for the word health.

According to WHO, health is a positive state beyond not being sick. Health is not only freedom from illness, however desirable that is, for starters. About half a century ago, the WHO described health as "a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or illness." Good health "not only includes being strong and feeling well, but also freedom from avoidable disease, a healthy physical environment, access to energy, safe water and clean air."

Wellness promoters, myself included, have long accepted the WHO concept of health as a highly desirable, positive state of being. Inherent in the definition are the qualities that wellness enthusiasts embrace, including the physical, mental and meaning and purpose dimensions -- and all the skill sets that fall under each of these three domains.

Now along comes another international organization with a mission to boost health, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). UNEP exists "to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations."

UNEP has set out the following explicit standards for high quality health. UNEP holds that people should have the ability to:

• Keep fit.
• Minimize health-related stress.
• Access medical care.
• Live the kinds of lives they have reason to value.
• Enjoy such instrumental freedoms as personal and environmental security, access to materials and good social relations.
• Make choices and take action.
• Access ecosystem goods and-services.
• Enjoy secure and adequate livelihoods, income and assets, enough food and clean water at all times, shelter, clothing, access to energy to keep warm and cool, and access to goods.

Under the expansive standard of health by WHO and UNEP, most people in the world today do not enjoy health, nor do a large number of Americans. According to the latter, health also entails personal and environmental security, access to natural and other resources, and freedom from violence, crime and wars as well as security from natural and human-caused disasters.

These standards for health further reduce the percentage of the Earth's inhabitants who can currently be considered healthy.

All this and more require environmental quality and the sustainability of ecosystem services. Can headway be made toward the promotion of health so broadly and ambitiously described?

I think the answer is - maybe! UNEP has issued a preliminary report based on its worldwide study project assessing the impact of environments on global health and well-being. Known as "Global Environment Outlook (GEO) 4," the UNEP project is described as an "integrated environmental assessment" (IEA) process. It should interest wellness promoters, despite the cost ($80). It involves hundreds of participants and stakeholders throughout the world. An abbreviated version of the extensive report, outlined for journalists, can be viewed at the UNEP website.

Environment and Development are the themes of the report. Special attention is given to the role and impact of the environment on human well-being as well as to the use of environmental valuation as a tool for decision-making. GEO-4's specialized report, the "Summary for Decision Makers," is an accompanying guide for policy-makers. Both publications are tools for teaching and research that highlight policy opportunities for a more sustainable approach to economic growth and development.

Of course, don't let reading these materials distract you from doing what you do to remain, as long as possible, healthy in the WHO and UNEP best sense of the word. Not mentioned but surely a characteristic of the health status both groups envision is an outlook tilted toward the bright side of life.

(Note: This essay will be filed in the archives in the MENTAL DOMAIN under the skill area of factual knowledge. Additional articles related to this theme may be found there.)

(Ed. Note: Views expressed in this and other columns are those of the author and not necessarily those of the SeekWellness Editorial Board.)

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