Well-being and its shadow: health promotion implications for older women

In this paper, I describe a theoretical extension to the ecological well-being model of personal, everyday well-being (Ruffing-Rahal, 1989) with the addition of a "shadow model" of core themes and properties. The expanded model enables recognition of transitions in well-being and qualitative experience, thereby providing a venue for deliberate health promotion interventions to address emergent threats to and optimizers of qualitative experience. Illustrative examples, drawn from the investigator's community field experiences involving group health promotion with community-dwelling older women, show the resourcefulness of the shadow model in identifying program topics for timely, relevant preventive and health promotion interventions. The advantages of a small group intervention are also discussed.