The importance of epistemology and translation for health and integration: A commentary on the special issue ‘Integrative approaches to health’

Abstract

In this commentary on the J-AIM Special Issue 'Integrative Approaches to Health', we argue for plural narratives of health to balance and to reconnect human populations with their environments, to foster a renewed culture of health and wellbeing. Integration of our inner and outer ecosystems with pluralistic health systems requires ‘movement’ and ‘change’ and the special issue provides papers on integration and health from multiple disciplinary perspectives that study humans, non-human, animals, and plants in relation to clinical trials, individual and population studies and health systems. All these perspectives provide new insights to map integrative approaches in health, illness and wellbeing in times of the climate emergency.

To ameliorate the biomedical and biopharmaceutical industries 'medicalisation of life' as the hegemonic and thus totalising human and more-than-human health systems and approach, the special issue acknowledges, situates and authorises broader visions and epistemologies of health and disease. These complementary epistemologies, their words, their movements (Ayu) and their health (Swastya) and balance (Soukya) are contained within indigenous health systems that include Ayurveda and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) amongst a vast array of local health cultures across the globe. In contrast with the narrower approach of medicalisation; integrative, inclusive, plural and sustainable approaches to health involve the respect for a population’s self-reliance in health (the 4^th Tier) and the dignity of the Sanskrit word for health, ‘Swastya’ which means ‘being rooted within’. These perspective and epistemologies will help to create a vision for health and health systems that encourage integration through the dignity of the individual (Atmasnman/Anubhuti), respect for the other (Pratiksa/Adara), trust in community (Nyasa) and the creation of systems of equity (Samata) and social justice for all (Nyaya).