Experiential health knowledge from the perspective of Finnish adults

The article describes how Finnish adults understand health. The data were collected by means of free-form thematic interviews and analyzed on the basis of an interpretive approach, representing the phenomenological research tradition. From the interviewees' responses, there emerged two different types of experiential health knowledge, namely institutional and individual health knowledge. Institutional health knowledge found expression in the following themes: knowledge about health as normalcy, knowledge about proper health care, knowledge about factors that may cause illness, knowledge about diseases observed in oneself, and knowledge about obtaining help. Individual health knowledge found expression in the following themes: knowledge about being healthy and feeling well, knowledge about how to produce well-being and how to deal with not feeling well, and knowledge about being ill and not feeling well. The results of the study provide conceptual tools for the further analysis of health knowledge from the perspective of people themselves and at the same time deeper knowledge about the ways in which people perceive health and in which they seek to maintain good health.