ABSTRACT
The chapter will provide a historical overview of the interrelationship between health and demographic, social, economic and cultural trends.
GOOD HEALTH IS A FUNDAMENTAL GOAL for people and the societies in which they live. Individuals hope for a life free from illness and pain, and societies, through the acts of governments, promote policies designed to counteract ill health. As the introduction to
this book showed, the meaning of the word health the present chapter will take a simplistic view of health, linking it is hotly debated. These debates will be revisited in Chapter 5, but to disease and death. This simplistic perspective will be used to introduce some of the key concepts used in the study of ‘health’; it will also underpin a review, which will continue into the next chapter, of the ‘health’ status of the British population. The intention in the present chapter is to assess broad processes of demographic and epidemiological change over long periods of time. This ‘long view’ will demonstrate that many of the key facets of presentday health status are derived from processes that have been in operation for some time. The next chapter will consider some of the more recent factors which influence health status.
