The Challenge of Health Seminar
- Time:
- 16:00 - 17:00
- Date:
- 1 November 2012
- Venue:
- Building 44 Room 3095 Shackleton Building University of Southampton Highfield Campus Southampton SO17 1BJ
For more information regarding this seminar, please telephone Allyson Marchi on 02380 599645 or email A.Marchi@soton.ac.uk .
Event details
Describing and measuring health and disability at the individual and population level is the challenge of health, both in research and practice. What should be described and measured regarding health is what matters to individuals in their day to day life and to us as public health professionals when we talk about the health of populations.
Describing and measuring health and disability at the individual and population level is the challenge of health, both in research and practice. What should be described and measured regarding health is what matters to individuals in their day to day life and to us as public health professionals when we talk about the health of populations.
What matters about health is what has been conceptualized as ‘human functioning’ by the World Health Organization in its International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). This includes functions and structures of the body, but also the capacity to act and perform simple and complex tasks and social roles. Functioning as a measurable operationalization of health is therefore an important step toward meeting the challenge of health. In my talk I will present results of investigations that show how this approach to health can be implemented both clinically and in public health by using the ICF as a framework for planning interventions and developing questions for health surveys. I will also show how this approach contributes to the harmonization of study results and the comparison of the level of health across populations.
Speaker information
Professor Alarcos Cieza ,Alarcos Cieza is Professor of Medical Psychology in the Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences and Honorary Chair Professor in the Faculty of Medicine. Her research focuses on (1) the description and measurement of health and disability in a broad range of clinical populations, specially neuropsychiatric disorders; (2) identification of health determinants and measurement of their impact on health; (3) health-related quality of life outcome measures; and (4) implementation of the psychosocial perspective in clinical medicine with a focus on neuropsychiatric disorders. This research is founded on the theoretical premiss that human functioning is the operationalization of health from a comprehensive perspective, include mental, bodily and social domains. The level of health is therefore determined by the health condition and environmental and psychological personal factors.