HEALTH CAPABILITY, HEALTH AGENCY, AND HEALTH FUNCTIONING
Importance of agency to functioning and of functioning to agency
WHAT IS IT?
Health capability, the ability to be healthy, includes both health agency and health functioning. Health agency is one’s ability to achieve health goals and act as agents of their own health and the health of others. Health functioning involves the health outcomes that individuals are able to achieve for themselves and others.
Health capability is grounded in human flourishing. As their health capabilities permit, individuals must use their health agency to achieve the health outcomes they and society value for themselves and others.
WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?
Health capability broadens the scope of social justice, health policy, and public health to include health agency and health functioning. The equity and efficiency of health and public policies should be grounded in the moral importance of valuing and improving individual and collective health capability.
Health capability offers individuals a realistic sense of their freedoms to pursue the lives they value. Prioritizing the development of one’s health capability — one’s health agency and health functioning — and meeting health needs will empower individuals and cultivate an environment for all to be able to be healthy.
WHAT DOES IT LOOK LIKE?
An individual with good health capability knows the importance of their agency to their functioning and of their functioning to their agency.
Knowing about our health and knowing how to be healthy allows us to make good decisions that promote better health outcomes for ourselves and others. Being self-motivated and motivated by duty about our and others’ health and flourishing, coupled with positive social conditions, improves our abilities to achieve better health outcomes for ourselves and others. Good health outcomes and positive health agency enable us to maintain and improve our and others’ health capability.
HOW DO WE DO IT?
Health capability development is life long. It starts at infancy, caring for and building the health capabilities of children, adolescents, and adults. Actively think about your health and that of your children. What are your health goals for you and your children, adolescents, and young adults? What health capabilities do you and your children, adolescents, and young adults need to develop over time to flourish? What attitudes and abilities do we need for capable aging?
What is my current health status of functioning and health agency? What steps can I take to know more about my health? What attitudes and skills do I need to develop to do so, and what do I want to accomplish? How can I improve my health agency and health functioning for myself and my community?
Positive social norms, supportive systems, institutions, and practices nourish us, and enable us, to be secure and proactive in providing solutions and solving problems. With these tools, we can better build the health capability of ourselves, our families, and our communities.