What is Integrated Health?
Responsibility for our health isn't something we can simply delegate to doctors and medicine. Most aspects of health are a reflection of the way we live our whole lives - aside of course from the genetic lottery or the misfortune of succumbing to infection (and even then, our lifestyles affect the robustness of our immune system).
Factors like fulfilling work, strong communities, the buildings we live in, our relationship with the natural world and the food we eat directly affect our wellbeing. So the first step in integrated health is helping people to make choices that keep them well and out of the healthcare system.
But once somebody is ill, treating their problem with an integrated approach means bringing together mainstream medical science with the best of other traditions. Complementary interventions may range from stress reduction techniques to therapies like acupuncture or nutritional therapy.
Integrated health is a response to the changing patterns of disease in the early 21st century. It recognises that sudden illnesses – a broken leg, an acute infection – can now be dealt with fairly swiftly by the health service, and cure is often possible. The patients now taking up around 80% of the time and resources of the health service are those experiencing a slow slide into chronic conditions – such as allergies, back pain, stress or heart disease. Unaddressed, these illnesses can accumulate into crippling conditions.
The answer to this kind of illness rarely lies in taking tablets alone, but rather in addressing lives in the round. This can often call for lateral thinking on the part of practitioners, finding innovative ways to bring people back to health.
We know too that empowerment is good for patients. Research is starting to reveal that when patients are equal partners (with the health professionals they see) in the management of their own health, it can actually have an affect on their 'clinical outcomes' - helping them to get better and stay as well as they can.
Of course, even the most fortunate person will in the end experience the effects of degeneration, old age and approaching death. So finally, integrated health looks beyond physical health to the factors that can give us solace, courage and dignity in difficult times.
This approach presents challenges for the general public and healthcare practitioners. Patients cannot just wait passively for others to find solutions. Doctors have to listen to their patients and seek more creative solutions – often working in a very constrained timeframe. And a host of other people – from town planners to food manufacturers – have to acknowledge the important role they play in the health of others.
It’s a big idea. It’s complex. It often calls for unlikely alliances. But there is a growing group of people who are putting integrated health into practice, in all its guises. This website explores some of the ways it can be done.