Health capital: an integrative resource-based framework for understanding health behavior and illness prevention

Health capital comprises those resources available to individuals that can, immediately or mediated through processes of conversion, be employed toward maintaining good health, as well as preventing and managing illness. Such resources can be economic, social, cultural, or even symbolic in nature, including but not limited to individuals’ health-related skills and competencies, their social networks and relationships, their financial means, and their social statuses. This chapter introduces the concept of health capital as an integrative resource-based framework for understanding health behavior and illness prevention. It contemplates public health, vaccination, and illness prevention from a health capital perspective and discusses how health capital opens up avenues of studying increasingly individualized health practices in the context of new patient roles and digital health technologies. The chapter reflects on health inequality and the explanatory and prescriptive role of health capital regarding the underlying disparities before concluding and providing directions for future research.