健康主义是近年来欧美创出的新词，表示各种关于卫生、健康、与医疗的意识形态建构。日文称「健康至上主义」。

此词最早由政治经济学者Robert Crawford于其1980年的论文《健康主义与日常生活的医疗化》中所提出，该文描述美国自1970年代以来的政治意识形态如何将健康与疾病的问题归因给个人。

Petr Skrabanek在1994年的著作《人道医疗之死与强迫式健康主义之兴起》（The Death of Humane Medicine and the Rise of Coercive Healthism）中专文探讨健康主义。Skrabanek文中以贬意方式使用健康主义一词。

Healthism, sometimes called public-healthism, is a neologism to describe a variety of ideological constructs concerning health and medicine. The term ‘healthism’ was most likely first used by the political economist Robert Crawford, whose article ‘Healthism and the medicalization of everyday life’ was published in 1980. In this article Crawford describes how the new political ideology, which emerged in the US during the 1970s, "[situated] the problem of health and disease at the level of the individual." The term is also known for its use in the 1994 book The Death of Humane Medicine and the Rise of Coercive Healthism by Petr Skrabanek. Skrabanek's use of "healthism", and most subsequent uses, are pejorative in intent. However, there is also a growing movement in the 21st century which see healthism as a positive empowering phenomenon which is not inherently coercive. This is exemplified through its popular uptake in the form of preventive medicine, yoga, meditation, fitness regimes, diets and the emphasis on lifestyle changes in mainstream Western society.