Abstract
This paper explores the conceptualization of the natural environment in an evolving ecological public health paradigm. The natural environment has long been recognized as essential to supporting life, health, and wellbeing. Our understanding of the relationship between the natural environment and health has steadily evolved from one of an undynamic environment to a more sophisticated understanding of ecological interactions. This evolution is reflected in a number of ecological public health models which demonstrate the many external and overlapping determinants of human health. Six models are presented here to demonstrate this evolution, each model reflecting an increasingly ecological appreciation for the fundamental role of the natural environment in supporting human health. We conclude that after decades of public health’s acceptance of the ecological paradigm, we are only now beginning to assemble knowledge of sophisticated ecological interdependencies and apply this knowledge to the conceptualization and study of the relationship between the natural environment and the determinants of human health.
Highlights
The recognition that human health is affected by a complex web of environmental determinants and processes, including the reciprocal determinism between the environment and human actions, represents an ecological way of thinking about health
Our ecological models have not fully reflected the complex ecological nature of humans as inseparable from the natural environment and human health as a product of this interdependence
The purpose of this paper is to outline the acceptance of the natural environment in our evolving ecological public health paradigm, a paradigm that has steadily incorporated the complex reciprocity between the natural environment and human actions
Summary
The recognition that human health is affected by a complex web of environmental determinants and processes, including the reciprocal determinism between the environment and human actions, represents an ecological way of thinking about health. The purpose of this paper is to outline the acceptance of the natural environment in our evolving ecological public health paradigm, a paradigm that has steadily incorporated the complex reciprocity between the natural environment and human actions This is achieved by first presenting a very brief history that begins with broad considerations of the environment (all physical things and conditions surrounding people) and health and culminating in a new public health that stresses, albeit in a somewhat limited fashion early on, ecological thinking. Following this we present a succession of conceptual ecological models of health. We present a number of movements attempting to formalize the interconnections between the natural environment and health and conclude that we are beginning to assemble knowledge of sophisticated ecological interdependencies and apply this knowledge to the conceptualization and study of the relationship between the natural environment and the determinants of human health
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