ABSTRACT
John Snow's famous map showing the spatial relationship between water-pump locations and cholera cases during an 1854 disease outbreak in London has been the subject of textbook chapters, mass-market paperbacks and documentaries. This map captures the synergy between studies of geography and infectious disease: space and place structure infectious disease transmission, prevalence and vulnerability, and infectious diseases, in turn, affect how people interact with and navigate their environment. One of the major theoretical developments in infectious-disease geography is Melinda Meade's triangle of disease ecology. Meade's work expands on May's foundational writings on disease ecology that argue that disease foci in certain populations can be explained by a combination of human activity and environmental characteristics. The triangle of disease ecology provides a framework for considering the effects of space and place on human diseases. Meade's triangle has been influential in both geography and epidemiology, providing a theoretical framework for considering multiple contextual factors in disease processes.
