HEALTH PROMOTION INTERNATIONAL Oxford University Press 1996

Vol. 11, No. 1Printed in Great Britain

The salutogenic model as a theory to guide healthpromotion1

AARON ANTONOVSKY2

SUMMARYThis paper provides a critical look at the challengesfacing the field of health promotion. Pointing to thepersistence of the disease orientation and the limits ofrisk factor approaches for conceptualizing and conduct-ing research on health, the salutogenic orientation is

presented as a more viable paradigm for health promo-tion research and practice. The Sense of Coherenceframework is offered as a useful theory for taking asalutogenic approach to health research.

Key words: health promotion; salutogenic model; theory

It is wise to see models, theories, constructs,hypotheses and even ideas as heuristic devices,not as holy truths. The young scientist of today,looking back, tends to be impatient with what wasexciting and fruitful to her older colleaguesyesterday. She tends to be unaware of thecontributions to thinking and research, even thebreakthroughs, of work which ultimately had tobe built upon, transformed or perhaps discarded,and oblivious to the importance of knowing howthe present flows from the past. On the otherhand, there are those who remain fixated on thepast, finding it difficult to re-examine, revise andmove ahead.

To take an example from my own field ofresearch in the stress process: none of ourgraduate students today is so naive as to think thatscores on a list of events perse can predict illnesswith any power. They know that one must distin-guish between negative and positive life events,consider whether the events were controllable,explore the coping mechanisms used, and so on.

1 This paper is based on a presentation at the WHO seminar

on "Theory in Health Promotion: Research and Practice',Copenhagen, 2-4 September 1992.

2 The late Dr Antonovsky was Professor Emeritus of the

Sociology of Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, Ben-GurionUniversity of the Negev, Beersheba, Israel.

Yet, when Hinkle and Wolfs Cornell Laboratoryof Social Ecology began developing the idea of'life events' in the 1950s, and when Holmes andRahe (1967) later published the SRRS (SocialReadjustment Rating Scale), a major step forwardhad been taken. A similar point can be made withrespect to the concept of psychosomatics. In the1930s it was revolutionary to suggest that some-thing in the mind could lead to somatic diseases.Today, I submit (though many would disagree),we are held back by the concept, because itimplies that some diseases are psychosomatic andothers are not. It perpetuates dualistic thinkingand prevents us from seeing that all human dis-tress is always that of an integrated organism,always has a psychic (and a social, I might add)and a somatic aspect.

This point has been made in order to prevent amisunderstanding of the thesis of this paper,which is: The concept of health promotion, revolu-tionary in the best sense when first introduced, is indanger of stagnation. This is the case becausethinking and research have not been exploited toformulate a theory to guide the field.

It would not be in place here to review theliterature on the concept of health promotion.It is, however, crucial to stress that it pre-sumably proposed a significant addition to, or

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12 A. Antonovsky

modification of, the concept of disease preven-tion. The latter had itself been a major stepforward in its time, in that it exposed the 'bias ofthe downstream focus', i.e. the devotion of thedisease care system to saving swimmers drowningdownstream by heroic measures, rather than ask-ing 'Who or what is pushing them into the river inthe first place?' On the conceptual level, healthpromotion is linked to the grand WHO vision of'Health is a state of optimal physical, mental andsocial well-being, and not merely the absence ofdisease and infirmity.' In the field, it is perhapsbest located as guiding the spirit of MCH(Maternal and Child Health) centers, viewed astaking on the task not only of immunizing againstthis or that disease, but of helping babies (andtheir mothers; fathers, of course, have nothing todo with their children's health) to be happy andhealthy.

If only people would engage in practices andbehaviors which are health-promotive, the think-ing went, there would be an immense decrease inhuman suffering. Some were even more sanguine,promising an increase in human happiness, as ifhealth were the only aspect of human existencedeterminant of happiness. A second claim hasalso been made, particularly recently; a claimwhich is a spinoff from the claim for diseaseprevention. The successful promotion of healthwould have a major economic impact. It would,on the one hand, decrease the need for disease-care expenditures and, on the other hand, allowpeople to be more economically productive (lessabsenteeism, greater work efficiency, etc.).

The concept of health promotion is surelyattractive and has given birth to some bright ideas.There have also been significant controversies.Thus, for example, the cost-saving claim hashardly been well-documented. People who arehealthy presumably are people who will livelonger and so, in the long run, might well havemore years of economic dependency. My hunch isthat one had best make the arguments for healthpromotion in value rather than in market-oriented terms. No one contends that museumspay off in cash.

A second very serious controversy relates tothe observation that health promoters (in thissense no different from disease preventers) havenot confronted the question of the creation ofappropriate social conditions which underlie orfacilitate health-promotive behaviors, e.g. ade-quate day care facilities and access to health care,not to speak of incomes adequate for decent

nutrition and housing. This debate has oftencentered around the 'lifestyle' concept. As Greenand Kreuter (1990, p. 320) put it: 'As a target forhealth promotion policy and programs, lifestylerefers, for some, to the consciously chosen,personal behavior of individuals as it may relateto health. Others interpret lifestyle as a compositeexpression of the social and cultural circum-stances that condition and constrain behavior, inaddition to the personal decisions ... ' [For themost recent and forthright expression of the latterposition, see McKinlay (1993).]

An attractive concept, bright ideas, some ofwhich have worked, and promises of saving whichremain undocumented may generate enthusiasm,but cannot become a cumulative basis for under-standing which would guide action. Much better,perhaps, to stay with a commitment to diseaseprevention. At least here there are good theories,a world of empirical knowledge, sophisticatedtechniques and methodologies, and evidence thatmany problems can be understood and managed.

One searches in vain through Volume 2, enti-tled Processes for Public Health Promotion, of theOxford Textbook of Public Health (Holland etal,1985), for a theoretical analysis of health promo-tion. The very valuable theoretically-orientedchapter by Maddox (1985, pp. 19-31) focuses on'the modification of social environments', but isconsistent with the rest of the book in remainingsquarely within the field of disease prevention.Similarly, despite the chapter title and an explicitsection called 'The Concept of Health Promo-tion', Tolsma and Kaplan (1992, p. 703) grantthat 'an accepted definition of health promotionhas been elusive'. I find little help in their refer-ence to the WHO European Regional OfficeOttawa Charter definition: 'Health promotion isthe process of enabling people to increase controlover, and to improve, their health.' Their ownemphasis, in quoting the justly famous 1974Canadian Lalonde Report and the 1979 HealthyPeople, the US Surgeon General's Report onHealth Promotion and Disease Prevention, is on'community and individual measures which canhelp [people] to develop lifestyles that can main-tain and enhance the state of well-being'. This toois the thrust of Green and Kreuter's (1990)important paper on health promotion.

When we look closely at the concept of 'life-styles' as it appears in the literature, however,what is found is a list of (generally well-documented) risk factors: smoking, other sub-stance abuse, overnutrition, drunken driving,

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unsafe sex, exposure to injuries. We remainsquarely in the realm of disease prevention,though not quite in the age of Snow's Broad Streetpump. Snow was concerned with cholera; manyimmunization programs are likewise disease-specific. The lifestyle concept, however, is some-what more broadbanded, in that the identifiedrisk factors are often precursors to a variety ofdiseases. It does not, however, even go as far asthe concept of breakdown, a proposal I advancedover two decades ago (Antonovsky, 1972), aproposal grounded in dis-ease (note the hyphen)prevention thinking.

Once again, I emphasize that I am being criticalof a field in which exciting and important workhas been done but one which is in danger ofunfulfilled promise because it lacks a theoreticalfoundation. Snow's contribution was important;but Pasteur's was far greater. It is, then, my goalhere to propose such a foundation, in terms ofwhat I call the salutogenic model. It is, however,not a theory which focuses on 'keeping people"well"'. Rather, in that it derives from studying thestrengths and the weaknesses of promotive,preventive, curative and rehabilitative ideas andpractices, it is a theory of the health of thatcomplex system, the human being.

A SALUTOGENIC ORIENTATIONMy point of departure is to focus attention on aparadigmatic axiom shared by the proponents ofcurative medicine (downstream) and disease-preventive (upstream) efforts alike. The axiom isone which is at the basis of the pathogenic orienta-tion which suffuses all western medical thinking:the human organism is a splendid system, amarvel of mechanical organization, which is nowand then attacked by a pathogen and damaged,acutely or chronically or fatally. Multiple causa-tion theory and the biopsychosocial model do notdispute this axiom. Nor do those who haveintroduced the concept of lifestyle, whether of the'blaming the victim' school or those who empha-size how social conditions structure lifestyles.

Proponents of health promotion, I suggest,have suffered a failure of nerve, in that, unable toconfront this axiom squarely, they have been heldback from theoretical progress. At least implicitlysharing this axiom, they too inevitably fall prey towhat I submit is the basic weakness of thecurrently dominant paradigm which follows fromthis axiom: the dichotomous classification ofpersons into those who have succumbed, tempo-

The salutogenic model 13

rarily, permanently or fatally to some disease(subdivided via the International Classification orDSMHIR) and the residual category (pre-sumably a large majority of at least Westernpopulations), those who are safely on shore.Curative medicine, to return to my metaphor, isdevoted to those who are drowning; preventivemedicine, to those in danger of being pushed intothe river upstream. What of health promotion?

It is no wonder, then, that the advocates ofhealth promotion as a field have succumbed to thepowerful but unfortunate flaw which flows fromthe dichotomous classification: the all-consumingconcern with risk factors, with pathogens. If one is'naturally' healthy, then all one has to do to staythat way is reduce the risk factors as much aspossible. Or, as I much prefer, all that socialinstitutions have to make sure of is that those riskfactors which can be reduced or done away withat the level of social action are handled, and thatsocial conditions allow, facilitate and encourageindividuals to engage in wise, low risk behavior.

As Thomas Kuhn pointed out, paradigmaticaxioms begin to crumble when uncomfortabledatum after datum piles up. All one has to do is toread the New York Times (I write this in theUnited States) every day for a period of severalmonths to encounter the prevalence data for thisor that disease in the United States (and presum-ably in any other Western country) and add thingsup. Notwithstanding the tendency of those withvested interests to exaggerate the numbers whosuffer from 'their' disease, and the fact of personswith multiple pathologies, none the less one mustbegin to question the axiom. Or, if one has apessimistic (some would say realistic) philosophi-cal bent, one sees the power of Murphy's Law. Or,attuned to the latest developments in the sciences,one is confronted by the most compelling ques-tion, the miracle of 'order out of chaos'.

Aware of these data, and influenced by theconcept of inevitable pressures toward entropyeven in open systems, I was led to propose theconceptual neologism of salutogenesistheorigins of health(Antonovsky, 1979). I urgedthat this orientation would prove to be morepowerful a guide for research and practice thanthe pathogenic orientation. If we start from theassumption that the human system (as all livingsystems) is inherently flawed, subject to unavoid-able entropic processes and unavoidable finaldeath, what follows is a set of ideas which canprovide a theoretical basis highly congenial to theproponents of health promotion, allowing it truly

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14 A. Antonovsky

to carve out an autonomous existencethoughone undoubtedly in partnership with curative andpreventive medicine.

If indeed each of us, by virtue of being a livingsystem, is in the river, and none are on the shore, itfollows that a dichotomous classificationwell/diseased or health/illness, as some would have itto take account of 'subjective' self-assessmentisinappropriate. A continuum model, which seeseach of us, at a given point in time, somewherealong a 'healthy/dis-ease continuum is, I believe, amore powerful and more accurate conception ofreality, one which opens the way for a strongtheory of health promotion. [I am fully aware ofthe great difficulty in operationalizing a health/dis-ease continuum. To discuss the matter herewould be impossible. For a recent brief but finereview of the problem, see Patrick and Bergner(1990).] To remain with the metaphor: we are all,always, in the dangerous river of life. The twinquestion is: How dangerous is our river? Howwell can we swim?

Having put it this way, we can move to thesecond weakness I have noted: the concentrationon risk factors. Posing the salutogenic question,namely, 'How can we understand movement ofpeople in the direction of the health end of thecontinuum?'note, all people, wherever they areat any given time, from the terminal patient to thevigorous adolescentwe cannot be content withan answer limited to 'by being low on risk factors'.To answer the question requires another neolog-ism: salutary factors. I would not quarrel with'health-promoting' factors or any other term, aslong as the concept is clear: factors which arenegentropic, actively promote health, rather thanjust being low on risk factors.

A salutogenic orientation, then, as the basis forhealth promotion, directs both research andaction efforts to encompass all persons, whereverthey are on the continuum, and to focus on salu-tary factors. There is, however, a third significantimplication of adopting such an orientation. Thepathogenic orientation of those engaged in pre-ventive medicine actions leads them to focus on aparticular diagnostic categoryif primary pre-vention, e.g. high-risk-for-diabetes-persons; ifsecondary prevention, diabeticsand to concen-trate on minimizing the risk factors for becomingdiabetic/getting worse. The specialization ofcurative medicine is even more notorious. Bycontrast, those engaged in health promotion,adopting a salutogenic orientation, might workwith a 'community' of persons who are middle-

aged, white-collar, married women, etc., etc. whoalso are characterized by being high on a numberof risk factors for diabetes, or who have beendiagnosed as having diabetes. The difference inphrasing is all-important! In the former case, oneis running a program to prevent non-diabeticsfrom becoming diabetics, or diabetics fromgetting worse from diabetes. No matter that theydie of heart attacks or are killed in traffic acci-dents, not to speak of disregarding any overallmove toward health. That's not the job of ouroutfit. The person is identified with the disease,which becomes the sole focus of attention.

The issue has a moral face. It is, I believe,impermissible to identify a rich, complex humanbeing with a particular pathology, disability orcharacteristic. I submit that, working with apathogenic orientation, one is pushed in thisdirection, pressured to forget the complexity.(Such obliviousness is, of course, appropriate inthe treatment of severe bleeding, cardiac resusci-tation, and all the other TV dramas which,important as they are, have little to do with therealities of most chronic illness.) The provider ofcare must indeed be highly empathetic and sensi-tive to withstand the pressure to forget the humanbeing who has the disease. The health promoter,irrespective of her personal bent, is pressured tobe concerned with the person.

The issue, however, is not only moral. It is alsoscientific. The identification of human complexitywith one-faceted particularity is simply poor care.A salutogenic orientation, which does not in theleast disregard the fact that a person has beendiagnosed as having diabetes or is at high risk forbreast cancer or shows signs of depression or hasbeen given 2 weeks to live as a 'terminal cancerpatient', of necessity, in asking, 'How can thisperson be helped to move toward greater health?'must relate to all aspects of the person.

A salutogenic orientation, I wrote, provides thebasis, the springboard, for the development of atheory which can be exploited by the field ofhealth promotion. I do not wish to claim that thereis a tabula rasa because we have not asked thesalutogenic question. Indeed, there are a fairnumber of ideas around, including the no-longermagic bullet of 'social supports'. The problem,however, is that bright ideas, as long as they areunintegrated into a theory, and certainly as long asthey are untested, are not very helpful. Moresignificantly, a good theory will give birth toproductive ideas. Which brings us to the sense ofcoherence.

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THE SENSE OF COHERENCE3

The 'bright ideas' which initiated my search for atheoretical answer to the question 'What explainsmovement toward the health pole of the healthease/dis-ease continuum?' were what I called'generalized resistance resources' (GRRs). Thisreferred to a property of a person, a collective or asituation which, as evidence or logic has indi-cated, facilitated successful coping with theinherent stressors of human existence. My ownwork on social class, poverty and health provideda major input (except that now I asked aboutmoving toward health and not towards disease),as did our study on cultural stability and thecoping by women of different ethnic groups withthe stressors of menopause (Datan etal., 1981).

The decisive step forward, however, in formu-lating a theory was taken when I began to ask whatdo all these GRRs have in common, why do theyseem to work. What united them, it seemed to me,was that they all fostered repeated life experi-ences which, to put it at its simplest, helped one tosee the world as 'making sense', cognitively,instrumentally and emotionally. Or, to put it ininformation-systems theory terms, the stimulibombarding one from the inner and outer en-vironments were perceived as information ratherthan as noise. These strands of thought led to theemergence of the sense of coherence (SOC)construct, a generalized orientation toward theworld which perceives it, on a continuum, ascomprehensible, manageable and meaningful.The strength of one's SOC, I proposed, was asignificant factor in facilitating the movementtoward health.

Confronted with a stressor, the person (orcollective; but this is another problem too com-plex to discuss here, though it is of decisiveimport) with a strong SOC will: wish to, be motivated to, cope (meaningful-

ness); believe that the challenge is understood (com-

prehensibility); believe that resources to cope are available

(manageability).These components will sound familiar to thosewho know the coping literature, for they are close

3 Since much has been written about the sense of coherence,

this section will be brief. Readers are referred to Antonovsky(1987), which contains the fullest statement of the salutogenicmodel.

The salutogenic model 15

to concepts like optimism, will to live, self-efficacy, learned resourcefulness, hardiness, etc.But it is the particular combination of the cog-nitive, behavioral and motivational which isunique. Moreover, unlike concepts such asinternal locus of control, mastery, empowerment,problem-solving coping, etc., the SOC is not aculture-bound construct. What gives one a senseof meaningfulness; which type or style of resourceone thinks is appropriate to apply to a givenproblem; in whose hands the resources are, aslong as they are in the hands of someone 'on myside' (e.g. God, a friend); how much informationone thinks one needs to comprehendthesubstantive answers to these questions may varygreatly from culture to culture, from situation tosituation. What matters is that one has had the lifeexperiences which lead to a strong SOC; this, inturn, allows one to 'reach out', in any given situa-tion, and apply the resources appropriate to thatstressor. (Of course there can be mistakes andfailures; but the person with a strong SOC learnsfrom these, and is not doomed to repeat them.)

If my hypothesis that the SOC is decisive infacilitating movement toward health is correct, anissue to which I shall soon return, the implicationis that it may provide a powerful, comprehensiveand systematic theoretical guide for research, andultimately for action, in the promotion of health.The SOC, then, in turn would become a depend-ent variable, to be shaped and manipulated sothat it in turn can push people toward health.

At this point it is essential that I make myposition clear. I do not wish to commit what Iregard as the profound error, noted above, ofsome of those who deal with the lifestyle concept,and say: If you are persuaded that I am right, thendecide to have a strong SOC! The strength ofone's SOC is shaped by three kinds of life experi-ences: consistency, underload-overload balance,and participation in socially valued decision-making. The extent of such experiences is moldedby one's position in the social structure and byone's cultureabove all, I am persuaded, by thekind of work (including housework) one does andby one's family structure, with input from manyother factors, ranging from gender and ethnicityto chance and genetics.

Having said this, I would none the lessemphasize that people are, within limits, pro-active and have some choice in life; and, further,that social institutions in all but the most chaotichistorical situations can be modified to somedegree. In order not to be too abstract, I refer to

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16 A. Antonovskysuch things as taking part in the organization of atrade union to fight for job security or a politicalstruggle to have paid job training for women whohave been divorced; participation in a serioustherapy group; changing (or even making) somecommitment in affiliation or activity. These willnot radically transform anyone's SOC. What theycan do is prevent damage, perhaps add a littlestrength and, in some cases, create an opening forthe beginning of a major change in life circum-stances.

TESTING THE SOC HYPOTHESIS

I have, then, suggested that adoption of a saluto-genic orientation in and of itself would be avaluable foundation for those engaged in healthpromotion, working with anyone at any point onthe health-illness continuum. But can one gobeyond the exploitation of what many have seenas an intuitively appealing idea and see the SOCas a theoretical basis for health promotion? Can itbe contended that strengthening the SOC ofpeople would be a major contributor to theirmove toward health?

As persuasive as the hypothesis might sound, ameasurement tool had to be developed to allow itto be tested empirically. Given the fact that myown experience has been in survey research, myattention was devoted to creating a closed scale tomeasure the SOC. In the volume which presentsthe fuller version of the salutogenic model(Antonovsky, 1987), a 29-item SOC 'Orientationto Life' scale is given, together with the story of itsdevelopment and scoring instructions. Havingbeen placed in the public domain, the scale has bynow been used by scores of researchers in some20 countries and has been translated into 15languages.

Two conclusions can be reached at least tenta-tively at present. These can only be stated herebriefly, and are documented in a recent paper(Antonovsky, 1993) which is based largely onpublished journal articles and, secondarily, ondata from dissertations and theses. First, there islittle doubt that the 29-item SOC scale (and, to aslightly lesser degree, its 13-item version) hasbeen found to be consistently feasible, reliableand valid. This is true across cultures, socialclasses and ethnic groups, and for men andwomen of all ages (and even for adolescents). Aword of caution must be noted. Thus far the scalehas not been used in non-Western cultures.

Second, the preponderance of the extantevidence is at least consistent with the SOC -health hypothesis. The correlations with a widevariety of measures of wellbeing and health on theone hand, and distress and maladaptation on theother, are consistently strong. Very few of thestudies, however, are longitudinal and hencenothing can be said about evidence in favor ofcausality. It should also be noted that referencehere is to one type of measure of a complexconstruct.

In short, at the present time, the appeal of thefull salutogenic model for those engaged in healthpromotion cannot be on the grounds of power-fully demonstrated efficacy in producing signifi-cant health-related change outcomes. As notedabove, however, there is no other theoreticalmodel which even claims to provide a potentialbasis for health promotion. The choice is to donothing, to continue to work with bright ideas(which tend to merge with preventive medicineand, more often than not, focus on a particularrisk factor and particular disease), or to structurea program which is based on the intellectuallysystematic organizing framework question: Whatcan be done in this 'community'factory, geo-graphic community, age or ethnic or gender group,chronic or even acute hospital population, thosewho suffer from a particular disability, etc.tostrengthen the sense of comprehensibility, man-ageability and meaningfulness of the persons whoconstitute it?

THE SALUTOGENIC MODEL, RESEARCHAND ACTION

As a researcher, my own bent is to stress the needfor further empirical testing of the hypothesis.There is a wide variety of questions to be clarified,above all that of causality. Among the questionswhich have been raised by findings in ongoingstudies relating to the SOC as an 'independent'variable are:

Does the SOC act primarily as a buffer, beingparticularly important for those at higherstressor levels, or is it of importance straightdown the line?

Is there a linear relationship between SOC andhealth, or is having a particularly weak (or aparticularly strong) SOC what matters?

Does the significance of the SOC vary with age,e.g. by the time the ranks have been thinned,

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and those who survive generally have a rela-tively strong SOC, does it still matter much?

Is there a stronger and more direct relationshipbetween the SOC and emotional wellbeingthan with physical wellbeing?

What is the relationship between the move-ment of the person toward wellbeing and thestrength of his/her collective SOC?

Does the SOC work through attitude andbehavior change, the emotional level, orperhaps, as suggested by the fascinating newfield of PNI (psychoneuroimmunology), fromcentral nervous system to natural killer cells?

My own particular program of research is focusedon the long-range, underlying historical, culturaland social structural developmental roots of theSOC. At the same time, by maintaining a networkof contacts among a wide variety of researchers,working in different countries (from the CzechRepublic to California, from Finland to SouthAfrica to Australia) and in different areas (fromchildren with developmental disabilities topersons undergoing cardiac rehabilitation tofarmers in drought areas to chronic pain patients),I can gain a more profound understanding of theproblems and promises, at a theoretical level, ofthe salutogenic model.

For those engaged in health promotion,research to obtain the answers to such questionsis essential if the salutogenic model is to gainascendance in guiding their work. But suchresearch is the primary responsibility of others.Of more direct concern is the systematic develop-ment of programs, guided by the SOC construct,designed to strengthen the sense of comprehens-ibility, manageability and/or meaningfulness of agiven population. Or, I might note, with particularreference to institutionalized populations, pro-grams modestly aimed at preventing the damagevery often done to the SOC of residents. Theemphasis, then, would be on treating the SOC as a'dependent' (or intervening) variable. Such pro-grams must, of course, always have a built-inresearch evaluation component, this being aimednot only at the usual 'Is it effective and is itefficient?' criteria, but research which would feedback into theoretical advance.

It would be presumptuous to propose specificprograms. These would have to be designed bypersons who, though informed by a salutogenicorientation, are experts in a particular field. Frommy own interactions with a wide variety of suchexperts in workshops conducted in a number of

The salutogenic model 17

countries (e.g. hospital nutritionists, family thera-pists, developmental disability experts), I havefound both enthusiasm and the generation ofsystematic programmatic proposals, once themodel is understood, with far more competencethan I could possibly show.

None the less, it might be helpful to refer to aconcrete program to illustrate how the saluto-genic model might be applied in action research.Clarke et al. (1992) report a well-designedcontrol study aimed at studying 'the effect ofsocial intervention [on health and wellbeing] over3 years among elderly people, aged 75 and above,living alone' (p.l517)ina British general practicelist of about 32 000 patients. After obtainingbaseline data, respondents were randomlydivided into experimental and control groups. Acaseworker was then assigned to the 261 personsin the former, with an offer of'social intervention'.'The type of assistance given varied but wastailored to each person's request for help'(p. 1519).

The introduction and literature review part ofthe paper explicitly state that the intervention wasguided by the concept of social support. It wasassumed that a core problem of elderly personsliving alone was social isolation, both as anemotional and as a pragmatic problem. The inter-vention, then, fell into five main categories: socialservices, financial, housing, nursing and medical.The reasonable hypothesis was that by meetingthe needs that were identified by respondents,both emotional and pragmatic problems could atleast be eased.

This applied research study is, I believe, amodest example of the most competent work inhealth promotion. For present purposes, itsfindings are beside the point, with one exception.Despite offers of 'individual packages of supportthat aimed at enhanced social contacts .. . half theelderly in this sample declined several offers ofhelp' (p. 1517). Had the authors been guided bythe SOC construct, asking 'How can the caseworkers strengthen the comprehensibility,manageability and meaningfulness of respon-dents?' the program might have been far richerand sophisticated. Further, the findings wouldhave made a more significant contribution totheory.

The assumption of the authors was that theseelderly people needed social contacts and hadparticular pragmatic needs. Of course this is trueon the common-sense level; or at least it was truefor half the people. And the others? Perhaps their

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18 A. Antonovskyneed is to proudly maintain their refusal toacknowledge to a case worker that they arewelfare cases, needing assistance from the author-ities? Or perhaps to give rather than to get, to berecognized as productive and needed by thesociety, rather than being treated at best asfurniture to be taken care of? Or perhaps to bereconciled with their children or grandchildren?Or perhaps to change their GP to one with whomthey can communicate better?

Lest I be misunderstood, I would emphasizethat these 'needs' are not bright ideas. They areexamples of ideas which flow from a translation ofthe components of the SOC to the concrete situa-tion. I venture to say that had the research startedwith the use of the SOC questionnaire and beenfollowed by a tailored program aimed at strength-ening each of the three components, one couldhave learned much more from the study. Thehealth outcomes might or might not have beendifferent from that which was found (the onlychange was a questionable improvement in per-ceived health). But it would have been a studysuggesting, for example, that the key to healthpromotion is motivational (meaningfulness)rather than cognitive (comprehensibility), or thereverse, or that both are equally important, a find-ing that allows cumulative progress.

I trust that my thesis has been clear. With greatrespect for the concept of health promotion (andfor those committed to it), I have none the lessbeen highly critical, in emphasizing that the basicflaw of the field is that it has no theory. The saluto-genic orientation has been proposed as providinga direction and focus, allowing the field to becommitted to concern with the entire spectrum ofhealth ease/dis-ease, to focus on salutary ratherthan risk factors, and always to see the entireperson (or collective) rather than the disease (ordisease rate) and the collaborator. Further, thesense of coherence construct (and one methodo-

logically respectable way to operationalize it) hasbeen discussed as a comprehensive source andguide for research and action in health promo-tion. The salutogenic model, I believe, is useful forall fields of health care. In its very spirit, however,it is particularly appropriate to health promotion.

REFERENCES

Antonovsky, A. (1972) Breakdown: a needed fourth step inthe armamentarium of modern medicine. Social Science andMedicine, 6,537-544.

Antonovsky, A. (1979) Health, Stress and Coping. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Antonovsky, A. (1987) Unraveling the Mystery of Health.Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Antonovsky, A. (1993) The structure and properties of thesense of coherence scale. Social Science and Medicine, 36.

Clarke, M, Clarke, S. J. and Jagger, C. (1992) Social interven-tion and the elderly: a randomized control trial. AmericanJournal of Epidemiology, 136,1517-1523.

Datan, N., Antonovsky, A. and Maoz, B. (1981) A Time toReap: The Middle Age of Women in Five Israeli Subcultures.Johns Hopkins, Baltimore, MD.

Green, L. W. and Kreuter, M. W. (1990) Health promotion asa public health strategy for the 1990s. Annual Review ofPublic Health, 11,319-334.

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