Part III: Health

Part III of the book focuses on the intersection of health with human rights and disability policy. We take a broad approach to health and wellbeing, focusing on the ways that policy shapes how people with disability are able to constitute their daily lives, as well as the social and structural conditions within which individual circumstances are enacted. Broader approaches to health and wellbeing are helpful here, which consider physical, psychological, and social wellbeing, and not only the absence of infirmity or disease. For example, Krahn et al. (2021) propose a definition of health as ‘the dynamic balance of physical, mental, social, and existential well-being in adapting to conditions of life and the environment. Health is dynamic, continuous, multidimensional, distinct from function, and determined by balance and adaptation.’