ABSTRACT

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.

section 1|74 pages

Perspectives and debates

chapter 2|3 pages

Introducing Section 1

Perspectives and debates

chapter 3|6 pages

Global health geographies

chapter 4|8 pages

Development

The past, present and future contributions of health geography

chapter 5|9 pages

Placing health inequalities

Where you live can kill you

chapter 6|8 pages

Environmental health inequities

From global to local contexts

chapter 7|7 pages

Infectious-disease geography

Disease outbreaks and outcomes through the lens of space and place

chapter 8|7 pages

Risk and resilience

chapter 10|7 pages

Food in health geography

chapter 11|9 pages

Un/healthy behavior

A bibliometric assessment of geographers’ contributions to understanding the association between environment and health-related behavior

section 2|70 pages

Theories and concepts

chapter 12|3 pages

Introducing Section 2

Theories and concepts

chapter 13|6 pages

Environments of health and care

The contributions of political economy

chapter 14|7 pages

Humanism and health geography

Placing the human in health geography

chapter 17|8 pages

Therapeutic landscapes

From exceptional sites of healing to everyday assemblages of well-being

chapter 18|7 pages

Well-being in health geography

Conceptualizations, contributions and questions

chapter 19|7 pages

Decentering geographies of health

The challenge of post-structuralism

chapter 20|6 pages

After posthumanism

Health geographies of networks and assemblages

section 3|72 pages

Groups and peoples

chapter 22|4 pages

Introducing Section 3

Groups and peoples

chapter 23|7 pages

The medicalization of homelessness

chapter 24|6 pages

Informal caregivers

People, place and identity

chapter 25|7 pages

Mapping life on the margins

Disability and chronic illness

chapter 27|7 pages

From inequities to place attachment and the provision of health care

Key concerns in the health geographies of aging

chapter 29|7 pages

Immigrant health

Insights and implications

chapter 31|9 pages

“This place is getting to me”

Geographical understandings of mental health

section 4|72 pages

Places and spaces

chapter 32|3 pages

Introducing Section 4

Places and spaces

chapter 35|7 pages

The place of primary care clinics

chapter 36|8 pages

Palettes of place

Green/blue spaces and health

chapter 40|9 pages

mHealth geographies

Mobile technologies and health in the Global South

section 5|78 pages

Practicing health geographies

chapter 42|3 pages

Introducing Section 5

Practicing health geographies

chapter 44|5 pages

Health geographies of art, music and sound

The remaking of self in place

chapter 47|7 pages

Navigating research ethics in health geography

The case of big data

chapter 48|9 pages

Spatial modeling’s place in health geography

Trends, critiques and future directions

chapter 49|7 pages

Difference matters

Approaches for acknowledging diversity in health geography research

chapter 50|7 pages

Practicing health geography in public health

A focus on population-health-intervention research

chapter 52|7 pages

Practitioner perspectives

The case of nursing geographies