The GEM model of health: a model based on generalized empirical method –Part 4 – Comparisons and contrasts

Abstract

In this paper, I compare and contrast in summary fashion (1) the GEM definition of health with that of the World Health Organization (WHO); (2) the methodical integration of judgments of fact and value in the GEM model with their incommensurability in most naturalist and normativist theories of health; (3) the significance of differentiating risk factors and disease relative to states of health in the GEM model with the tendency to blur any such difference in current multifactorial accounts of disability and dysfunction; (4) the GEM model’s emphasis on the common core of operations underlying health science and healthcare with the gap separating hermeneutic understanding and scientific explanation that is often the rule in humanistic accounts of health and (5) the role of the ordered and eco-socially conditioned set of relationships in the GEM model of health with the multilevel perspective on health in the developing field of global bioethics. In conclusion, I note that the GEM model offers a unique framework - a higher viewpoint - for integrating in dynamic fashion the manifold viewpoints of clinical practice, the humanities, health science and health policy.