Hodges' Model: Welcome to the QUAD: 'Health - Illness': Status - presence - absence - Being

Hodges' model is a conceptual framework to support reflection and critical thinking. Situated, the model can help integrate all disciplines (academic and professional). Amid news items, are posts that illustrate the scope and application of the model. A bibliography and A4 template are provided in the sidebar. Welcome to the QUAD ...

Saturday, March 21, 2026

'Health - Illness': Status - presence - absence - Being

A pre-charity shop revisit: 

'So long as we are healthy, we do not notice that we are healthy. Health is one of those phenomena that we do not perceive as anything special because they are a part of everyday life. We discover them by their absence. Only illness enables us to see health as health. That I am healthy, and in what way I am healthy, is something I experience when, and to the extent that, I am or was not healthy, or when I perceive (but this it is difficult to do) that, and to what extent, someone else is or was not healthy. Being healthy is not the only 'being' that escapes our gaze precisely by being, and that appears to us by its absence. One could say the same of being as such.' p.257.

von Weizsäcker, Carl Friedrich (1971 [1980 trans.]). Einheit der Natur [The Unity of Nature] New York: Farrar Straus Giroux.

If we are to demonstrate ('prove') that Hodges' model can be applied, is relevant in:

  • illness, disease, trauma (physical and mental);
  • health and well-being; 
  • human development, ageing, pregnancy;
  • social care; 
  • preventive medicine, health promotion, health education;
  • life sciences, bioengineering; 
  • public (community and mental) health;
  • self care;
  • spiritual health;
  • and global - planetary (political) health ...

Then these observations by Friedrich, allied with definitions of health, as per the WHO's Constitution:

'Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.'
https://www.who.int/about/governance/constitution

The oft cited (when I was a student nurse) definition of nursing by Virginia Henderson:

“Assisting the individual, sick or well, in the performance of those activities contributing to health or its recovery (or to peaceful death) that an individual would perform unaided if he had the necessary strength, will or knowledge”.
https://libguides.twu.edu/c.php?g=270174&p=1803121

We need to 'see' beyond these sources, to take in the global situation. But, being situated this is something Hodges' model is ideally equipped to achieve.