The research proposes a paradigm shift in public-health management: from disease control to the intentional design of health, adopting a systemic and salutogenic approach.

Inspired by Total Quality Management (TQM) principles, ISO 9001:2015-compliant Quality Management Systems, and W. Edwards Deming’s vision, the project embraces continuous improvement and shared values. It is aligned with the “Quality Built-in” principle, ensuring that results conform to requirements from the very design stage, thereby reducing downstream errors and costs.

 

 

The primary objective of the research is to focus attention and raise awareness of the need for correct lifestyles—especially a healthy diet—to reduce the risk of chronic diseases:

 

 

The project is open internationally to public and private bodies, non-profit organisations, academic institutions, quality professionals, healthcare practitioners, and communities committed to the systemic promotion of health.

 

 

Quality experts, healthcare professionals, and university lecturers:

Non-profit organisations active in spreading Quality methodologies:

 

 

With the support of the collaborative website www.historyofquality.com, the following archives are being published and continuously updated:

 

 

Develop a certifiable and verifiable “Disciplinary Framework” that Conformity-Assessment Bodies (CABs) can use to guide organisations in building effective, measurable, and sustainable health-generating systems.

 

 

In ours research work, the reference to salutogenesis does not carry an ideological or broadly theoretical meaning, but is deliberately limited and grounded in a precise methodological rationale.

Ours interest in salutogenesis arises exclusively from its conceptual connection with Clause 8.3 – Design and development of the ISO 9001:2015 standard.

After many years of working with the APQP methodology within the IATF 16949 framework, a conviction typical of quality culture has become firmly established in ours professional thinking:

quality – and therefore the final outcome – is created during the design phase, not during downstream inspection or control. In the industrial domain, this principle is well established: if a product is poorly designed, no final inspection can make it compliant.

When this logic is transferred to the field of health, the parallel becomes clear: chronic diseases are not sudden events, but the coherent outcome of life, environmental, dietary and organizational processes that have not been designed, or have been poorly designed.

In this sense, the term salutogenesis is instrumental and functional, not identitarian: it refers to the concept of genesis, origin and upstream design of health, fully consistent with the logic of ISO 9001 Clause 8.3.

However, even before the role of nutrition—which nevertheless remains a fundamental determinant of chronic diseases—what emerges most clearly from ours professional experience is the extraordinary value of third-party audits, carried out by highly qualified assessors in organizations certified to ISO 9001 or IATF 16949, and in particular the regular and ongoing support (often on a bi-monthly basis) that such audits make possible.

These audits do not merely represent conformity assessments; rather, they constitute a powerful mechanism for organizational learning.

Systematic interaction with experienced auditors promotes:

a deeper and more mature understanding of the standards;

the internalization of the process approach;

the concrete application of true continuous improvement, understood not as a formal requirement but as a daily management practice.

Continuous improvement, as embedded in ISO standards, is not a recent invention, but is rooted in the thinking of quality pioneers such as W. Edwards Deming, whose contributions enabled the evolution of product and service quality across many nations.

Based on this experience, I believe that a strong third-party audit culture, when exercised with competence, independence and continuity, represents one of the most effective mechanisms for the design and sustained maintenance of quality.

Applied rigorously and systemically, this same logic can offer a decisive contribution in the field of health promotion and the reduction of chronic diseases, complementing and reinforcing actions on primary determinants, starting with nutrition.

In summary, our approach does not propose an alternative theory of health, but rather a conscious transposition of the principles of quality, design and continuous improvement—as embodied in ISO 9001—into the field of public health, where designing well upstream means structurally reducing the need for downstream intervention.