Salutogenic Community Medicine

Abstract

The pursuit of health as peace and happiness across physical, mental, and social dimensions remains incomplete under the pathogenesis-driven paradigm of the past two centuries. While scientific development has advanced disease prevention and treatment, it has fallen short of achieving a comprehensive, holistic, and planetary view of wellbeing. The salutogenic model, introduced by Antonovsky, offers a proactive, comprehensive, holistic and could be a cost effective method to achieve peace and happiness. It could be an alternative by emphasizing comprehensibility, meaningfulness, and manageability—measured through the Sense of Coherence (SOC) scale. Our efforts should be to strengthen positive attitude, positive behaviours and healthy environment around us. This approach aligns with Siddharth Gautam’s Eightfold Path, which demonstrated the law of causation of happiness, and resonates with the Ottawa Charter’s five priority action areas for health promotion, i.e., to build healthy public policy; create supportive environments for health; strengthen community action for health; develop personal skills; and re-orient health services. Community Medicine, as defined by the National Medical Commission, remains influenced by Winslow’s public health framework, yet a salutogenic orientation reframes it toward positive determinants of health. This paradigm shift emphasizes strengthening positive attitudes, behaviors, and environments, while embedding sustainability, technology, human values, social justice, and equity into community participation. Salutogenic community medicine thus represents a progressive evolution—moving beyond disease prevention to health creation—preparing societies for the next level of peace and happiness in an interconnected world.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.24321/2349.2880.202603

How to cite this article:
Kishore J. Salutogenic Community Medicine. Int J Preven Curat Comm Med. 2026;12(2):1-4.