%0 Journal Article
%T Bio-psycho-social medicine is a comprehensive form of medicine bridging clinical medicine and public health
%A Mutsuhiro Nakao
%J BioPsychoSocial Medicine
%D 2010
%I BioMed Central
%R 10.1186/1751-0759-4-19
%X In the symposium addressing the "healthy hospital", Kawachi has set the scene for a debate about people's health by pitting medical care against population-level preventive activities [5]. In this debate, patient-centered clinical care is positioned at one pole, while population-wide public health activities - such as encouraging healthier lifestyles or improving the physical and social environment - end up being positioned at the opposite pole. Such debates are unnecessarily polarizing and run the risk of oversimplifying the determinants of population health to the point of caricature [5]. According to Article 1 of the Medical Practitioners Act in Japan [6], medical practitioners or physicians should focus on the improvement and promotion of public health by using both medical care and health guidance to secure a generally healthy life for a broad range of people in Japan. Clinical medicine is closely linked to a public health approach, and medical practices should be undertaken within the limited human, time, and financial resources available. In addition to a high-risk approach for those who suffer or are likely to suffer from illnesses, a population approach emphasizing health communication, a health program, and the health system should be employed to maintain people's health. In this sense, psychosomatic medicine helps to create a bridge between clinical medicine and public health.In this special series on public health, five articles are presented to introduce important concepts of social medicine relevant to the research fields of psychosomatic medicine. The first concept is health literacy [7]. Health literacy is a concept that has been intensively applied to medical research since the 1990s and defined as the cognitive and social skills that determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand, and use information in ways that promote and maintain good health [8]. Ishikawa and her colleagues have been studying health literacy a
%U http://www.bpsmedicine.com/content/4/1/19