A Developmental Model of Health and Nursing

Abstract

This is the last article written by Moyra Allen prior to her death in 1996. Allen believed that nursing has a vital role to play in reorienting the Canadian health care system to goals more appropriate to our rapidly changing society—the development of healthful living styles, healthy families, and healthy communities. First, she argued, we must separate the ideas of health and illness. Health is fundamentally a social phenomenon, a way of living or behaving that is readily communicated within such institutions as the family and across groups through the media and community life. She asked: What are the resources that families/groups require to recognize and develop their potential for healthful living? How can professionals work with families in this process? In this article, she lays out an organizing plan or model with which to seek answers to these questions and the inquiry process through which the model-building process evolved.