Is Community Important for Health?: Examining the Biopsychosocial Interface

Abstract

The United States has created the most expensive, technologically advanced medical system in the world. Health outcomes, however, fail to achieve results commensurate with investment. After identifying the scope of population health concerns untreated by the current U.S. healthcare system, an explanatory model suggests that the relational basis of health and adaptation has been neglected by providers and policymakers. Finding root sources of health in the strength of relationships between individuals and within communities, recommendations are made for applying an integrated model of personal, community, and national health.