Background Metaphors are central to the human understanding of complex issues; through the immediate associations they evoke and frame problems and suggest solutions. Our suggestion of Music in the Park as a metaphor for health systems reform brings to the forefront the environmentally diverse but bounded spaces of health services that offer a variety of attractors within their confines, while pushing into the background organizational and economic concerns.Reflections Parks, like health services, are embedded in their local landscape, serving their communities, (...) but most importantly parks are public spaces, publically funded, ideally offering universal access and equity and to be shared by all who want to go there.Music, like health, is tangible, technical and scientific, yet ultimately experiential and based on meaning. While it encompasses a wide range of styles and approaches, music making requires as its most important skill active listening which brings with it to be ‘in the moment’, to take personal risks and to draw energy and inspiration from the participants. Hence ‘audiences’ are equally active participants because music only has meaning if it internally resonates with the listener and only can exist in what is a co-constructed experience.Conclusions Music in the Park is a metaphor for primary health care systems based on shared values of experts and unique local communities. Health professionals are players in this arena, who develop and practise the full range of their skills in response to individual and community needs and preferences. Their leadership works through inspiration and empowerment, making patients ‘co-producers’ of their own health and ‘co-shapers’ of their health services. (shrink)

"Every man has his particular way of being in good health" - Emanuel Kant. Emanuel Kant's description of health stands in stark contrast to accepted definitions of health. For example, the WHO defines ‘health’ as ‘a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’. However, as people get on with day-to-day living, no one can achieve the goal of ‘complete physical, mental and social well-being’. It is odd to define ‘health’ as (...) a negative state that puts it beyond the reach of everyone. This paper explores the idea of health being a personal state, health being the product of every man's particular way of making sense of his particular circumstances. (shrink)

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the veracity of a theoretically derived model of health that describes a non-linear trajectory of health from birth to death with available population data sets. Methods: The distribution of mortality by age is directly related to health at that age, thus health approximates 1/mortality. The inverse of available all-cause mortality data from various time periods and populations was used as proxy data to compare with the theoretically derived non-linear health model predictions, (...) using both qualitative approaches and quantitative one-sample Kolmogorov–Smirnov analysis with Monte Carlo simulation. Results: The mortality data's inverse resembles a log–normal distribution as predicted by the proposed health model. The curves have identical slopes from birth and follow a logarithmic decline from peak health in young adulthood. A majority of the sampled populations had a good to excellent quantitative fit to a log–normal distribution, supporting the underlying model assumptions. Post hoc manipulation showed the model predictions to be stable. Conclusions: This is a first theory of health to be validated by proxy data, namely the inverse of all-cause mortality. This non-linear model, derived from the notion of the interaction of physical, environmental, mental, emotional, social and sense-making domains of health, gives physicians a more rigorous basis to direct health care services and resources away from disease-focused elder care towards broad-based biopsychosocial interventions earlier in life. (shrink)