ABSTRACT
This keyword essay considers the term “health” and how its various uses and meanings over time have come to frame not only medical issues, but our understandings of youth, morality, citizenship, and responsibility. Concerns about young people's health have long been the subject of health campaigns, government interest, and school curricula. Consequently, discussion concerning health has occurred across multiple disciplines and subdisciplines either as a central theme within youth studies (e.g., health, well-being, vulnerabilities) or within other related disciplines (e.g., critical weight studies, pedagogy, sociology of education, sociology of health and illness, and more recently children's geographies [Colls & Horschelmann, 2009] and new social studies of childhood [Holloway & Valentine, 2000], and surveillance studies). Given the contentious nature of some of the emerging and continued issues surrounding young people's health (weight, sexuality, drinking, etc.), many of these themes are subject to discursive and policy contestations among diverse constituencies. In examining the formation of “health” as a keyword within the field of youth studies, the essay concludes with suggested alternatives for future approaches toward reimagining health.
