Being and becoming healthy: the core of nursing knowledge

Health has been described as a central concept and the goal of nursing. The incongruence between that centrality in nursing and in other disciplines and the public's view is discussed. Other issues and views of health also are considered, including diversity and unity in conceptualizing health, the social nature and societal obligations toward the health of the individual, the lack of congruency between conceptual and empirical views of health, and health as viewed in nursing and in the international arena. Several conditions to be included in nurses' attempts in the theoretical development of health are articulated. The need for focusing on an understanding of the health care needs of underserved populations, the potential advantage in using a feminist framework, and the integration between a static conception of being healthy and a process/dynamic/becoming conception of health are some of the strategies that can be used to develop a contextual conception of health.