HEALTHY SOCIETY
The term a healthy society is made up of two distinct words, ‘healthy’ and ‘society’. A society comprises of a group of people who are closely interlinked by various activities and relationships, and who usually share a common geographical region. Being healthy refers to the state of wholly being well in terms of the physical, spiritual, emotional, and in all the aspects that surrounds the well-being of the existence of the society.
A healthy society does not only point to a society that is free from sicknesses and diseases but rather a healthy society is a broad aspect. This essay explores some of the aspects that are aimed at describing what a healthy society entails.
For a society to be regarded as healthy, the economy of such a society cannot be ignored. It has to be guided by principles that are democratically developed from the members that make up the society. A healthy society takes the responsibility of ensuring that the weak are accorded protection as well as providing opportunities for the strong to prosper. It is a fundamental requirement for a healthy society to implement stringent laws and ensuring that these laws are fairly enforce. This ensures that those who pose as a threat to the peace to the society are put to check as well as establishing independent institutions that champions the society’s wellbeing.
A healthy society is characteristic of a rich diversity in views, behaviors, beliefs, interests, and priorities. This is a major driving force to the prosperity of a society and they should be cultivated and controlled to ensure that such does not infringe freedom of other members or are not used to oppress other members in the society; but rather they should be used to promote the success and ensure the society stays on the course of prospering.
Far much away from the services of physicians, nurses, doctors and other providers of support to healthcare, there are other more fundamental contributors to the advances towards the attainment of a healthy society. These factors are such as, income of the members of the society, the education that the members of the society get, the employment opportunities available to the society members, housing, the environment and the social support accorded. With better income, the people are able to afford better living conditions, which culminates to better physical health, a peaceful coexistence and improved self-esteem. Better education enables the members of a society to make better-informed decisions on what to do for a better life. They learn how to interact better with the other society members which results to a healthier society in the aspect of peaceful coexistence. Quality education enables people to get to know their rights which helps them to live a life free from intimidations from the higher authorities; in other words they are in a better position to question the authority in the event they feel their rights have been infringed.
A healthy society can also be defined by the ability of that society to maintain an accessible and safe neighborhood. A society whose neighborhood is unstable and full of conflicts cannot be considered as healthy. Therefore, a given society should be able to strive towards the stability, peace and prosperity of their neighbors so that their peace and stability too will not be compromised. For instance, for two countries neighboring each other to be considered as healthy society, each one should take the responsibility of assisting their neighbor to ensure there are no threats to stability such as wars and terrorism. The occurrence of wars and violence in any given country ultimately results in spillovers to the neighbors and hence negatively affecting the neighbors. Encouraging peace to neighbors is a sure ingredient to a healthy society.
As seen above, a healthy society does not necessarily focus on curing or preventing sicknesses and diseases. It is however the overall consideration of all the contributory factors whose goal is aimed at ensuring the total well being for all the members who constitute the society. Some of these factors are such as quality education, good income, access to quality physical, emotional and spiritual wellbeing, affordable housing, freedom of expression, security and inclusivity in policy development and implementation. These factors can be considered when defining a healthy society.
