Health care is the prevention, treatment, and management of illness and the preservation of mental and physical well being through the services offered by the medical, nursing, and allied health professions.

The foundations for the Health Sciences fields are as old as the human race. Humans have always been in need of solutions to address illness, injury, and various health related issues such as childbirth. With modern technology and the backing of the pure sciences, the scientific accuracy of these fields has greatly improved.

Applied health sciences also endeavor to better understand health, but in addition they try to directly improve the health of individuals and of people in general. Some of these are: alternative health, biomedical engineering, biotechnology, clinical laboratory sciences, medicine, nursing, nutrition, pharmacology, pharmacy, public health, psychology, and physical therapy.

Health research builds upon the basic sciences of biology, chemistry, and physics as well as a variety of multidisciplinary fields (for example medical sociology). Some of the other primarily research-oriented fields that make exceptionally significant contributions to health science are alternative health, biochemistry, epidemiology, and genetics, natural health.

Dietitians educate people about proper nutrition, particularly specific dietary needs of populations such as people with diabetes, breastfeeding women, and people with celiac disease. Other less common medical areas include first aid and triage. Therapies that were once suspect to your average medical doctor, like chiropractic care and acupuncture, are becoming mainstream and are considered complementary to standard medicine rather than in competition with it.