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© Oxford University Press 1996 Printed in Great Britain
SUMMARY
This paper provides a critical look at the challenges presented as a more viable paradigm for health promo-
facing the field of health promotion. Pointing to the tion research and practice. The Sense of Coherence
persistence of the disease orientation and the limits of framework is offered as a useful theory for taking a
risk factor approaches for conceptualizing and conduct- salutogenic approach to health research.
ing research on health, the salutogenic orientation is
It is wise to see models, theories, constructs, Yet, when Hinkle and Wolfs Cornell Laboratory
hypotheses and even ideas as heuristic devices, of Social Ecology began developing the idea of
not as holy truths. The young scientist of today, 'life events' in the 1950s, and when Holmes and
looking back, tends to be impatient with what was Rahe (1967) later published the SRRS (Social
exciting and fruitful to her older colleagues Readjustment Rating Scale), a major step forward
yesterday. She tends to be unaware of the had been taken. A similar point can be made with
contributions to thinking and research, even the respect to the concept of psychosomatics. In the
breakthroughs, of work which ultimately had to 1930s it was revolutionary to suggest that some-
be built upon, transformed or perhaps discarded, thing in the mind could lead to somatic diseases.
and oblivious to the importance of knowing how Today, I submit (though many would disagree),
the present flows from the past. On the other we are held back by the concept, because it
hand, there are those who remain fixated on the implies that some diseases are psychosomatic and
past, finding it difficult to re-examine, revise and others are not. It perpetuates dualistic thinking
move ahead. and prevents us from seeing that all human dis-
To take an example from my own field of tress is always that of an integrated organism,
research in the stress process: none of our always has a psychic (and a social, I might add)
graduate students today is so naive as to think that and a somatic aspect.
scores on a list of events perse can predict illness This point has been made in order to prevent a
with any power. They know that one must distin- misunderstanding of the thesis of this paper,
guish between negative and positive life events, which is: The concept ofhealth promotion, revolu-
consider whether the events were controllable, tionary in the best sense whenfirstintroduced, is in
explore the coping mechanisms used, and so on. danger of stagnation. This is the case because
thinking and research have not been exploited to
1
This paper is based on a presentation at the WHO seminar formulate a theory to guide the field.
on "Theory in Health Promotion: Research and Practice', It would not be in place here to review the
Copenhagen, 2-4 September 1992.
2
The late Dr Antonovsky was Professor Emeritus of the
literature on the concept of health promotion.
Sociology of Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-Gurion It is, however, crucial to stress that it pre-
University of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel. sumably proposed a significant addition to, or
11
unsafe sex, exposure to injuries. We remain rarily, permanently or fatally to some disease
squarely in the realm of disease prevention, (subdivided via the International Classification or
though not quite in the age of Snow's Broad Street DSM—HI—R) and the residual category (pre-
pump. Snow was concerned with cholera; many sumably a large majority of at least Western
immunization programs are likewise disease- populations), those who are safely on shore.
specific. The lifestyle concept, however, is some- Curative medicine, to return to my metaphor, is
what more broadbanded, in that the identified devoted to those who are drowning; preventive
risk factors are often precursors to a variety of medicine, to those in danger of being pushed into
diseases. It does not, however, even go as far as the river upstream. What of health promotion?
the concept of breakdown, a proposal I advanced It is no wonder, then, that the advocates of
over two decades ago (Antonovsky, 1972), a health promotion as a field have succumbed to the
proposal grounded in dis-ease (note the hyphen) powerful but unfortunate flaw which flows from
prevention thinking. the dichotomous classification: the all-consuming
Once again, I emphasize that I am being critical concern withriskfactors, with pathogens. If one is
of a field in which exciting and important work 'naturally' healthy, then all one has to do to stay
has been done but one which is in danger of that way is reduce the risk factors as much as
unfulfilled promise because it lacks a theoretical possible. Or, as I much prefer, all that social
foundation. Snow's contribution was important; institutions have to make sure of is that those risk
but Pasteur's was far greater. It is, then, my goal factors which can be reduced or done away with
here to propose such a foundation, in terms of at the level of social action are handled, and that
what I call the salutogenic model. It is, however, social conditions allow, facilitate and encourage
not a theory which focuses on 'keeping people individuals to engage in wise, low risk behavior.
"well"'. Rather, in that it derives from studying the As Thomas Kuhn pointed out, paradigmatic
strengths and the weaknesses of promotive, axioms begin to crumble when uncomfortable
preventive, curative and rehabilitative ideas and datum after datum piles up. All one has to do is to
practices, it is a theory of the health of that read the New York Times (I write this in the
complex system, the human being. United States) every day for a period of several
months to encounter the prevalence data for this
A SALUTOGENIC ORIENTATION or that disease in the United States (and presum-
ably in any other Western country) and add things
My point of departure is to focus attention on a up. Notwithstanding the tendency of those with
paradigmatic axiom shared by the proponents of vested interests to exaggerate the numbers who
curative medicine (downstream) and disease- suffer from 'their' disease, and the fact of persons
preventive (upstream) efforts alike. The axiom is with multiple pathologies, none the less one must
one which is at the basis of the pathogenic orienta- begin to question the axiom. Or, if one has a
tion which suffuses all western medical thinking: pessimistic (some would say realistic) philosophi-
the human organism is a splendid system, a cal bent, one sees the power of Murphy's Law. Or,
marvel of mechanical organization, which is now attuned to the latest developments in the sciences,
and then attacked by a pathogen and damaged, one is confronted by the most compelling ques-
acutely or chronically or fatally. Multiple causa- tion, the miracle of 'order out of chaos'.
tion theory and the biopsychosocial model do not Aware of these data, and influenced by the
dispute this axiom. Nor do those who have concept of inevitable pressures toward entropy
introduced the concept of lifestyle, whether of the even in open systems, I was led to propose the
'blaming the victim' school or those who empha- conceptual neologism of salutogenesis—the
size how social conditions structure lifestyles. origins of health—(Antonovsky, 1979). I urged
Proponents of health promotion, I suggest, that this orientation would prove to be more
have suffered a failure of nerve, in that, unable to powerful a guide for research and practice than
confront this axiom squarely, they have been held the pathogenic orientation. If we start from the
back from theoretical progress. At least implicitly assumption that the human system (as all living
sharing this axiom, they too inevitably fall prey to systems) is inherently flawed, subject to unavoid-
what I submit is the basic weakness of the able entropic processes and unavoidable final
currently dominant paradigm which follows from death, what follows is a set of ideas which can
this axiom: the dichotomous classification of provide a theoretical basis highly congenial to the
persons into those who have succumbed, tempo- proponents of health promotion, allowing it truly
and those who survive generally have a rela- countries (e.g. hospital nutritionists, family thera-
tively strong SOC, does it still matter much? pists, developmental disability experts), I have
• Is there a stronger and more direct relationship found both enthusiasm and the generation of
between the SOC and emotional wellbeing systematic programmatic proposals, once the
than with physical wellbeing? model is understood, with far more competence
• What is the relationship between the move- than I could possibly show.
ment of the person toward wellbeing and the None the less, it might be helpful to refer to a
strength of his/her collective SOC? concrete program to illustrate how the saluto-
• Does the SOC work through attitude and genic model might be applied in action research.
behavior change, the emotional level, or Clarke et al. (1992) report a well-designed
perhaps, as suggested by the fascinating new control study aimed at studying 'the effect of
field of PNI (psychoneuroimmunology), from social intervention [on health and wellbeing] over
central nervous system to natural killer cells? 3 years among elderly people, aged 75 and above,
living alone' (p.l517)ina British general practice
My own particular program of research is focused list of about 32 000 patients. After obtaining
on the long-range, underlying historical, cultural baseline data, respondents were randomly
and social structural developmental roots of the divided into experimental and control groups. A
SOC. At the same time, by maintaining a network caseworker was then assigned to the 261 persons
of contacts among a wide variety of researchers, in the former, with an offer of'social intervention'.
working in different countries (from the Czech 'The type of assistance given varied but was
Republic to California, from Finland to South tailored to each person's request for help'
Africa to Australia) and in different areas (from (p. 1519).
children with developmental disabilities to The introduction and literature review part of
persons undergoing cardiac rehabilitation to the paper explicitly state that the intervention was
farmers in drought areas to chronic pain patients), guided by the concept of social support. It was
I can gain a more profound understanding of the assumed that a core problem of elderly persons
problems and promises, at a theoretical level, of living alone was social isolation, both as an
the salutogenic model. emotional and as a pragmatic problem. The inter-
For those engaged in health promotion, vention, then, fell into five main categories: social
research to obtain the answers to such questions services, financial, housing, nursing and medical.
is essential if the salutogenic model is to gain The reasonable hypothesis was that by meeting
ascendance in guiding their work. But such the needs that were identified by respondents,
research is the primary responsibility of others. both emotional and pragmatic problems could at
Of more direct concern is the systematic develop- least be eased.
ment of programs, guided by the SOC construct, This applied research study is, I believe, a
designed to strengthen the sense of comprehens- modest example of the most competent work in
ibility, manageability and/or meaningfulness of a health promotion. For present purposes, its
given population. Or, I might note, with particular findings are beside the point, with one exception.
reference to institutionalized populations, pro- Despite offers of 'individual packages of support
grams modestly aimed at preventing the damage that aimed at enhanced social contacts ... half the
very often done to the SOC of residents. The elderly in this sample declined several offers of
emphasis, then, would be on treating the SOC as a help' (p. 1517). Had the authors been guided by
'dependent' (or intervening) variable. Such pro- the SOC construct, asking 'How can the case
grams must, of course, always have a built-in workers strengthen the comprehensibility,
research evaluation component, this being aimed manageability and meaningfulness of respon-
not only at the usual 'Is it effective and is it dents?' the program might have been far richer
efficient?' criteria, but research which would feed and sophisticated. Further, the findings would
back into theoretical advance. have made a more significant contribution to
It would be presumptuous to propose specific theory.
programs. These would have to be designed by The assumption of the authors was that these
persons who, though informed by a salutogenic elderly people needed social contacts and had
orientation, are experts in a particular field. From particular pragmatic needs. Of course this is true
my own interactions with a wide variety of such on the common-sense level; or at least it was true
experts in workshops conducted in a number of for half the people. And the others? Perhaps their