A consideration of health in relation to global and diverse social and economic contexts forces nurses to reexamine the centrality of health in the discipline of nursing and to confront the issue of whether health is a personal matter. In this article, the authors review development of the concept of health in nursing science, discuss the limitations of some current definitions in addressing diverse clients, and challenge members of the discipline to develop a contextualized definition of health congruent with societal needs and the mission of nursing.
(C) 1993 Aspen Publishers, Inc.