2. Development of a New Concept of Health

This chapter sketches the historical development of the thinking on health. Where people, in the past, thought about health in terms of balance, this was subsequently replaced by medical-analytical thinking. Since then, this perspective has been broadening again, as expressed, for example, in the World Health Organization’s definition of health from 1948. However, the WHO definition is formulated in a static way. Over the past decade, a Dutch initiative led to a proposal for a new description of health, based on resilience and personal control. This formulation has been further elaborated into the Positive Health concept, with six dimensions that are in line with how patients perceive their own health. At its core is a meaningful life. The chapter discusses how the care provider of the future will be trained as a T-shaped professional. These professionals combine knowledge on disease (vertical bar of the T) with a broad health-oriented vision of humankind (horizontal bar of the T). A paradigm shift is taking place in the thinking on health care: from thinking in terms of disease-control to thinking in terms of resilience.