Housing and Health: From Interdisciplinary Principles to Professional Practice

This paper suggests that there is a need for innovative approaches in the complex field of housing and health. It suggests that current shortcomings in academic research and professional practice are mainly the result of a narrow vision that does not address the fundamental issues at stake. In contrast to traditional disciplinary approaches which are sectoral, interdisciplinarity offers a broader approach. Interdisciplinarity highlights the difference between a biomedical model that often adopts a symptom-treatment interpretation of housing and health, and a holistic or integrated model that combines biological, cultural, economic, political, psychological and social factors in a new way. One example of an interdisciplinary approach is en ecological perspective which has been applied to interpret housing and health.