This weeks lecture explored health geography in GIS and set the foundation for Lab 2, and Paper review 2.
It was discussed that geography is important in health because many determinants of health are spatial. GIS can be a powerful tool for deciphering and interpreting health trends across space. We discussed that this can be a controversial topic as people have many different perspectives on what it should encompass. It was emphasized that health geographers investigate “place” over “space”, and that there is a unique role of place within space.
There are 5 positions of health geography:
- spatial patterns of health services
- spatial patterns of health and illness
- humanistic approches to “medical geography”
- cultural approaches to “medical geography”
- structural approches to “medical geography”