An Introduction to the Geography of Health

An Introduction to the Geography of Health

Author: Helen Hazen

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2012-05-23

Total Pages: 297

ISBN-13: 1135999333

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Health issues such as the emergence of infectious diseases, the potential influence of global warming on human health, and the escalating strain of increasing longevity and chronic conditions on healthcare systems are of growing importance in an increasingly peopled and interconnected world. A geographic approach to the study of health offers a critical perspective to these issues, considering how changing relationships between people and their environments influence human health. An Introduction to the Geography of Health provides an accessible introduction to this rapidly growing field, covering theoretical and methodological background. The text is divided into three sections which consider distinct approaches and techniques related to health geographies. Section one introduces ecological approaches, with a focus on how natural and built environments affect human health. For instance, how have irrigation projects influenced the spread of water-borne diseases? How can modern healthcare settings, such as hospitals, affect the spread and evolution of pathogens? Section two discusses social aspects of health and healthcare, considering health as not merely a biological interaction between a pathogen and human host, but as a process that is situated among social factors which ultimately drive who suffers from what, and where disease occurs. Section three then considers spatial techniques and approaches to exploring health, giving special focus to the growing role of cartography and geographic information systems (GIS) in the study of health. This clearly written text contains a range of pedagogical features including a wealth of global case studies, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, a colour plate section and over eighty diagrams and figures. The accompanying website also provides presentations, exercises, further resources, and tables and figures. This book is an essential introductory text for undergraduate students studying Geography, Health and Social Studies.


Health and Medical Geography

Health and Medical Geography

Author: Michael Emch

Publisher: Guilford Publications

Published: 2017-02-02

Total Pages: 553

ISBN-13: 1462528961

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Why are rainfall, carcinogens, and primary care physicians distributed unevenly over space? The fourth edition of the leading text in the field has been updated and reorganized to cover the latest developments in disease ecology and health promotion across the globe. The book accessibly introduces the core questions and perspectives of health and medical geography and presents cutting-edge techniques of mapping and spatial analysis. It explores the intersecting genetic, ecological, behavioral, cultural, and socioeconomic processes that underlie patterns of health and disease in particular places, including how new diseases and epidemics emerge. Geographic dimensions of health care access and service provision are addressed. More than 100 figures include 16 color plates; most are available as PowerPoint slides at the companion website. New to This Edition: *Chapters on the political ecology of health; emerging infectious diseases and landscape genetics; food, diet, and nutrition; and urban health. *Coverage of Middle East respiratory syndrome, Ebola, and Zika; impacts on health of global climate change; contaminated water crises in economically developed countries, including in Flint, Michigan; China's rapid industrial growth; and other timely topics. *Updated throughout with current data and concepts plus advances in GIS. Pedagogical Features: *End-of-chapter review questions and suggestions for further reading. *Section Introductions that describe each chapter. *"Quick Reviews"--within-chapter recaps of key concepts. *Bold-faced key terms and an end-of-book glossary.


Understanding the Changing Planet

Understanding the Changing Planet

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2010-07-23

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 0309150752

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From the oceans to continental heartlands, human activities have altered the physical characteristics of Earth's surface. With Earth's population projected to peak at 8 to 12 billion people by 2050 and the additional stress of climate change, it is more important than ever to understand how and where these changes are happening. Innovation in the geographical sciences has the potential to advance knowledge of place-based environmental change, sustainability, and the impacts of a rapidly changing economy and society. Understanding the Changing Planet outlines eleven strategic directions to focus research and leverage new technologies to harness the potential that the geographical sciences offer.


A Companion to Health and Medical Geography

A Companion to Health and Medical Geography

Author: Tim Brown

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2009-12-21

Total Pages: 646

ISBN-13: 1405170034

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A COMPANION TO HEALTH AND MEDICAL GEOGRAPHY A Companion to Health and Medical Geography provides an essential starting point for anyone interested in studying the role of geography and of geographers, both past and present, in promoting an understanding of issues relating to health and illness. Whilst thoroughly mapping out the territory covered by the sub-discipline and examining changes in focus and terminology, this book offers a discussion of the major themes from differing methodological and theoretical perspectives. Questions of class, ethnicity, gender, age, and sexuality are covered throughout the text and case studies within chapters draw upon scholarship from around the globe in order to illuminate key points. Organized to promote dialogue and encourage health and medical geographers to rethink sub-disciplinary boundaries, this Companion provides a unique account of the history of the field and its future potential and possibilities.


Disease Maps

Disease Maps

Author: Tom Koch

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2011-06-01

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 0226449408

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In the seventeenth century, a map of the plague suggested a radical idea—that the disease was carried and spread by humans. In the nineteenth century, maps of cholera cases were used to prove its waterborne nature. More recently, maps charting the swine flu pandemic caused worldwide panic and sent shockwaves through the medical community. In Disease Maps, Tom Koch contends that to understand epidemics and their history we need to think about maps of varying scale, from the individual body to shared symptoms evidenced across cities, nations, and the world. Disease Maps begins with a brief review of epidemic mapping today and a detailed example of its power. Koch then traces the early history of medical cartography, including pandemics such as European plague and yellow fever, and the advancements in anatomy, printing, and world atlases that paved the way for their mapping. Moving on to the scourge of the nineteenth century—cholera—Koch considers the many choleras argued into existence by the maps of the day, including a new perspective on John Snow’s science and legacy. Finally, Koch addresses contemporary outbreaks such as AIDS, cancer, and H1N1, and reaches into the future, toward the coming epidemics. Ultimately, Disease Maps redefines conventional medical history with new surgical precision, revealing that only in maps do patterns emerge that allow disease theories to be proposed, hypotheses tested, and treatments advanced.


Health, Disease and Society

Health, Disease and Society

Author: Kelvyn Jones

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-05-25

Total Pages: 392

ISBN-13: 9781032254005

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Originally published in 1987 this textbook is a comprehensive introduction to the rapidly developing field of medical geography. It illustrates the ideas, methods and debates that inform contemporary approaches to the subject, demonstrating the potential of a social and environmental approach to illness and health. The central theme is the need to reject an exclusively biological approach to health. The authors examine both the geography of health care and outline a selection of health service planning initiatives in both North America and Europe.


Routledge Handbook of Health Geography

Routledge Handbook of Health Geography

Author: Valorie A. Crooks

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-14

Total Pages: 545

ISBN-13: 1351598538

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The places of our daily life affect our health, well-being, and receipt of health care in complex ways. The connection between health and place has been acknowledged for centuries, and the contemporary discipline of health geography sets as its core mission to uncover and explicate all facets of this connection. The Routledge Handbook of Health Geography features 52 chapters from leading international thinkers that collectively characterize the breadth and depth of current thinking on the health–place connection. It will be of interest to students seeking an introduction to health geography as well as multidisciplinary health scholars looking to explore the intersection between health and place. This book provides a coherent synthesis of scholarship in health geography as well as multidisciplinary insights into cutting-edge research. It explores the key concepts central to appreciating the ways in which place influences our health, from the micro-space of the body to the macro-scale of entire world regions, in order to articulate historical and contemporary aspects of this influence.


The Social Geography of Medicine and Health (RLE Social & Cultural Geography)

The Social Geography of Medicine and Health (RLE Social & Cultural Geography)

Author: John Eyles

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-01-10

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1317907272

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This book, originally published in 1983, drawing material from Europe, the USA, the Soviet Union and the Developing World, provides a comprehensive review of the key issues in medical geography. It sets the central problems of medical geography in a broad social context as well as in a spatial one and analyses changing conceptions of health and illness in detail. It also explores the pathological relationship between people and their environment and illustrates that social phenomena form spatial patterns which provide a good starting point for the examination of the relationship between medicine, health and society.


Challenges and Successes in Reducing Health Disparities

Challenges and Successes in Reducing Health Disparities

Author: Institute of Medicine

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2008-06-13

Total Pages: 210

ISBN-13: 030918570X

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In early 2007, the Institute of Medicine convened the Roundtable on Health Disparities to increase the visibility of racial and ethnic health disparities as a national problem, to further the development of programs and strategies to reduce disparities, to foster the emergence of leadership on this issue, and to track promising activities and developments in health care that could lead to dramatically reducing or eliminating disparities. The Roundtable's first workshop, Challenges and Successes in Reducing Health Disparities, was held in St. Louis, Missouri, on July 31, 2007, and examined (1) the importance of differences in life expectancy within the United States, (2) the reasons for those differences, and (3) the implications of this information for programs and policy makers.


Under the Weather

Under the Weather

Author: National Research Council

Publisher: National Academies Press

Published: 2001-06-29

Total Pages: 161

ISBN-13: 0309072786

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Since the dawn of medical science, people have recognized connections between a change in the weather and the appearance of epidemic disease. With today's technology, some hope that it will be possible to build models for predicting the emergence and spread of many infectious diseases based on climate and weather forecasts. However, separating the effects of climate from other effects presents a tremendous scientific challenge. Can we use climate and weather forecasts to predict infectious disease outbreaks? Can the field of public health advance from "surveillance and response" to "prediction and prevention?" And perhaps the most important question of all: Can we predict how global warming will affect the emergence and transmission of infectious disease agents around the world? Under the Weather evaluates our current understanding of the linkages among climate, ecosystems, and infectious disease; it then goes a step further and outlines the research needed to improve our understanding of these linkages. The book also examines the potential for using climate forecasts and ecological observations to help predict infectious disease outbreaks, identifies the necessary components for an epidemic early warning system, and reviews lessons learned from the use of climate forecasts in other realms of human activity.