Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Holistic Health in Children: Conceptualization, Assessment and Potential

  • Book
  • © 2018

Overview

Authors:
  1. Valerie Michaelson

    1. Department of Public Health Sciences and School of Religion, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Nathan King

    1. Department of Public Health Sciences, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  3. William Pickett

    1. Department of Public Health Sciences, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Introduces the theory of holism and its application to adolescent health
  • Outlines the basic elements of theory that underlie holistic understandings of adolescent health
  • Provides practical recommendations on the factors that influence the health of adolescents
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Well-Being and Quality of Life Research (BRIEFSWELLBEING)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (5 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-ix
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Introduction to Holism

    • Valerie Michaelson, Nathan King, William Pickett
    Pages 1-14

  3. Child Perceptions of Health

    • Valerie Michaelson, Nathan King, William Pickett
    Pages 15-30

  4. Metaphors and Child Health

    • Valerie Michaelson, Nathan King, William Pickett
    Pages 31-50

  5. Testing the Theory of Holism in Child Health Settings Using Quantitative Approaches

    • Valerie Michaelson, Nathan King, William Pickett
    Pages 51-68

  6. Integration of Findings

    • Valerie Michaelson, Nathan King, William Pickett
    Pages 69-87

  7. Back Matter

    Pages 89-104
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

This book presents the results of the Canadian Holistic Health in Children project. Rooted in an ancient concept, this study addresses some novel thinking surrounding the assessment of health and its determinants in adolescent populations. Holism refers to the assessment of complex systems as composite wholes, instead of or in addition to their constituent parts. This idea is rarely applied to the study of health in children, and its application to adolescent populations represents a potentially important gap in knowledge. It fills this gap by conducting a series of analyses in a mixed methods paradigm.  Quantitatively, it develops new measures and analytic strategies to be used in the assessment of health and its determinants in adolescents, and then applied these a series of national and cross-national studies. Qualitatively, it explores the origins and models of health inferred from existing theory as well as quantitative findings with groups of young people, and captures the richness of their stories in recurrent themes and metaphor.  


This book outlines the basic elements of theory that underlie holistic understandings of adolescent health, quantitative and qualitative findings, and then presents and interprets the results and translates them into a series of practical recommendations.

Authors and Affiliations

  • Department of Public Health Sciences and School of Religion, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

    Valerie Michaelson

  • Department of Public Health Sciences, Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada

    Nathan King, William Pickett

About the authors

Dr. Pickett is a PhD epidemiologist trained at Queen’s and the University of Toronto.  He and his colleagues lead an active research program, with focus on the health of children, rural health, injury and violence prevention, and applied emergency medicine research.  He is Deputy principal investigator of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children Study in Canada.  He is a lead investigator on the CIHR Team in Child and Youth Injury.  He also is the principal investigator of several CIHR operating grants that involve study of adolescent health and its determinants, farm injuries, and injuries to children. 

Dr. Michaelson has primary research interests in “religion and childhood”, “child health and well-being” and “child spirituality”. Her primary training is in qualitative research methods, including phenomenology, grounded theory, arts based research and photo voice. She brings additional training and experience in knowledge translation and mixed methods approaches to data analysis and integration, and has worked as part of a mixed methods research team for the past 4 years. She also leads a Youth Engagement Program with the Childhealth 2.0 Research Team out of the Department of Public Health Sciences at Queen’s University. 

Bibliographic Information

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation