ABSTRACT
In the past two decades or so, geographers and researchers in cognate disciplines have significantly advanced our understanding of the geographies of health, disease, and well-being in different areas of the world (e.g., Gatrell and Elliott 2009; Brown, McLafferty and Moon 2010; Meade and Emch 2010; Pearce and Witten 2010). Various theoretical perspectives and geographic methods have been applied to study health issues (e.g., Kearns 1993; Dorn and Laws 1994; Elliott et al. 2000; Andrews and Evans 2008; Cromley and McLafferty 2011). Importantly, health scholars have re-asserted the roles of environment, place, context, and neighborhood as significant influences on health behaviors and outcomes (e.g., Jones and Moon 1993; Diez Roux 1998, 2001; Curtis and Jones 1998; Macintyre, Ellaway, and Cummins 2002; Kawachi and Berkman 2003; McLafferty 2008; Nemeth et al. 2012). It is now widely recognized that geographic variations in health, disease, and well-being cannot be explained exclusively in terms of the characteristics of individuals, as specific characteristics of place or neighborhoods (e.g., collective efficacy) also exert significant influence on health.
