Consider social model and its relation to Lay beliefs (W5):The social model of health suggests that a good understanding of lay knowledge can usefully inform expert knowledge

Lay perspectives are about how people respond to, interpret and experience health, illness and disease. People may argue that, I am ok because of my house is in good conditions.

Health is top most in lay people’s judgments about health, then people, who report, are feeling happy, satisfied, and to be enjoying life might feel little motivation to address even dangerous physical health problems and behaviours until it disturbs their Social-Emotional Health. Such a prediction would make sense, given previous findings that, the people, who overestimate their actual health status, tend to emphasise non-biomedical factors (such as emotional or spiritual well-being) in their health self-assessments (Idler, Hudson, & Leventhal, 1999).

Studies examining Social-Emotional Health as a mediator between beliefs about health practices, and actual behaviour change, could further test such a process. Additionally, practical recommendations to laypeople on how to maintain and enhance Social-Emotional Health while (or despite) making other health behavioural changes, may serve to aid the success of such change efforts. (Assessment of everyday beliefs about health: The Lay Concepts of Health Inventory, college student version. Christina A. Downeya * and Edward C. Changb).

Frequently, lay knowledge of health is informed by culture and personal biography. For many people with a chronic illness, for instance, maintaining and creating a story that provides a sense of self and identity is just as if not more than, important than medical discourses about their condition. General, the social model of health invites us to adopt a deeper and far-ranging perception and understanding of health. The lessons from biomedicine and medical science are important but health is much more than just referring to ‘blood-and-bones’ and seeing it managed in a hospital or physician context. Health, and what makes people healthy, can only be fully understood by exploring the numerous of connections and influences that emerge out of the difficulties of human experience and the various inter-relationships of the mind, body and society.(Chris Yuill, Iain Crinson and Eilidh Duncan 2010SAGE Key Concepts Series: Key Concepts in Health Studies).