Journal of evaluation in clinical practice
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COVID-19 has seen politicians use a selective 'science' to justify restrictions on mobility and association, to mandate the wearing of face masks, and to close public infrastructure. There seems to be no role for health humanities scholars as yet, but perhaps there should be. ⋯ This article, which did not operate from within the biomedical episteme but which was in conversation with the episteme, was misappropriated on both sides of the political spectrum to justify personal beliefs around mask use in the pandemic. This mistaken misappropriation is not only evidence of the utility of the common ground shared between biomedicine and the health humanities, it is also evidence of the possibilities inherent in a future interdisciplinary involving biomedicine and the health humanities.
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This paper addresses an ontological question about the nature of health and challenges some underpinning assumptions in western healthcare. In its analysis, health in its various statuses, is framed as a naturally occurring complex adaptive system made up of dynamically interacting subsystems that include the physiological, psychological, and social realms. Furthermore, openness in complex systems such as health, is necessary for the exchange of energy, information, and resources. ⋯ This paper draws on the complexity sciences and Levinasian philosophy to explicate the essential role of system openness in individual, population, and systemic viability. It highlights holism to be "not whole-ism", and system openness to be, not just a reality, but a critical feature of viability. Hence requisite openness is advocated as essential to efficacious and ethical healthcare practice and strategy, and vital for health.