Dimensions of Health and Health Promotion

This book contains scholarly contributions to several current debates in the philosophy of medicine and health care regarding the nature of health and health promotion, concepts and measurements of mental illness, phenomenological conceptions of health and illness, allocation of health care resources, criteria for proper medical science, the clinical meeting, and ethical constraints in such a meeting.
With one exception, the authors in this book are or have been teachers or graduate students at the interdisciplinary Department of Health and Society (Tema H) at Linköping University, Sweden. While all the texts have a philosophical focus, many other disciplines have influenced the choice of specific perspectives. The university backgrounds of the authors range from medicine, psychology, sociology, and religion to philosophy. What binds the authors together is their deep interest in the theory of medicine and in the pursuit of a philosophy of humanistic medicine and health care.

Per-Erik Liss, Ph.D., is Associate Professor at the Department of Health and Society, Linköping University. He has a background in philosophy and re-ceived his doctoral degree at the Department of Health and Society in 1990. He has a particular interest in the field of setting priorities in health care; his main publication in this field is Health Care Need (1993).
Lennart Nordenfelt has been Professor of Philosophy of Medicine and Health Care at the Department of Health and Society, Linköping University, since 1987. He received his doctoral degree in theoretical philosophy at the Uni-versity of Uppsala in 1974 and was subsequently appointed a lecturer in theoretical philosophy at the University of Stockholm. Nordenfelt has made contributions mainly to action theory, the theory of medicine, and the theory of health and welfare. His monographs include On the Nature of Health (1987 and 1995) and Action, Ability, and Health (2000).