Health and Health Promotion: an Approximation to Its Historical and Social Development

Abstract

The health-disease concept can be considered from different theoretical perspectives. This paper presents an overview of the principal focuses that have been developed around it, with the intention of identifying its scope. The objective is to clarify the conceptual perspectives of both, health and health promotion, as historical facts, circumscribed and affected by a social reality, and therefore, builders of not only a knowledge but also of an institutional practice that determines the different movements from which the communities direct the understanding and management of their health. These statements do not imply that persons and collectives, like historical and active beings, do not exercise in an autonomous way its own convictions and decisions regarding their lives.