A strong healthy economy versus a strong healthy environment - Essay Example

There is the old adage that health is wealth, which means that “a healthy person can work with efficiency to earn wealth”.Therefore, it could be deduced that everything begins with a disposition for health that starts from within and from the person’s values of importance to have a strong healthy environment. When one is to reflect on the question, which is more important: a strong healthy economy or a strong healthy environment, the appropriate response to this question lies first in defining the determinants of health.

According to Healthy People 2020, there are five crucial determinants of health: economic stability, education, social and community context, health and health care, as well as neighborhood and environment. Suffice it to say that these determinants are on equal footing with each other; meaning, one determinant does not surpass the relevance or importance of the other one, since each facet is instrumental for the overall success and healthy status of the citizens. Economists could profess that a healthy economy is more important; while environmentalists would contend that a healthy environment is a key to a healthy economy (Aurilio and Sargent).

However, given that for the sake of argumentation, one needs to make a choice regarding preferential importance: a strong healthy economy versus a strong healthy environment, one is convinced that a strong healthy economy is of a paramount concern. . Concurrently, a healthy economy eventually creates economic stability that effectively addresses an effective use of natural resources, and an appropriate disposal of wastes, among others. A healthy economy has determined the most effective use of the natural resources in the environment to make economic activities sustainable, in the long run.

As emphasized, “using our natural resource base in a more efficient way, and maintaining a larger supply of both non-renewable and renewable resources relative to demand, makes the products of a nation, a company, or a community more competitive in the marketplace” (Church par. 14). Evidently, a healthy environment, per se, does not benefit society in the long run – but, being able to use the natural resources towards economic pursuit generate greater advantages for a greater number of people over a longer time frame.

People in an economically stable environment have learned to deal with issues of sustainability and social responsibility that integrates environmental protection and conservation. Church averred that measures of economic growth are effective gauges of the health of the economy: “growth in gross national product has become the seminal indicator of the health of our economy… If an economic activity produces directly one million dollars in product, but also results in one million dollars of costs in health impacts and destruction of essential assets, common sense might lead you to think nothing has been gained.

But health services and asset replacement are part of the gross national product, and using GNP as a measure, the loss becomes a gain” (par. 10). Thus, through economic indicators, a strong and healthy economy and society is effectively and