Health, Functioning and Wellbeing: Individual and Societal

Abstract

As a society we invest an enormous amount of resources in health because we are convinced that health is linked in some way to a person's wellbeing – and that population health is linked to overall societal welfare. But the nature of this link, and evidence for it, are more controversial. After exploring current attempts to operationalize wellbeing in a manner amenable to measurement, in this paper we offer a way for securing the link between the provision of healthcare and individual wellbeing, and societal welfare by highlighting what matters to people about their health. We argue that it is the lived experience of health, its impact on daily life that matters. This experience is captured by the notion of 'functioning' in World Health Organization (WHO)'s International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). Moreover, viewed as an indicator of health – on par with mortality and morbidity – functioning provides the essential bridge that links the provision of health both to individual wellbeing and, at the population level, societal welfare.