In order to understand health geography, we need to first discuss medical geography. Medical geography is the application of geographical perspectives, concepts, methods, and techniques to investigate health-related topics. It focuses on the well-known in considering the spatial and ecological perspectives on disease and health care delivery. As well, diseases are thought to be naturally occurring in place, irrespective of the underlying characteristics of space and the relationship that people have with the environment. It represents the traditional approaches to health and geography which contrasts the contemporary approaches that have led to the new generation of health geographers. So, health geography is not simply just related to medical geography, as it is not limited by the viewpoints of the biomedical sphere Contemporary geographies of health argue that notions of health, disease, and illness are problematic, and intimately linked to power relations in society. It is concerned with the dynamic relationship between health and place, as well as the impacts of both health services and the health of population groups on the vitality of places.
The five strands of health geography are: (1) spatial patterning of disease and health; (2) spatial patterning of service provision; (3) humanistic approaches to medical geography; (4) structuralist/materialist/critical approaches to medical geography; and (5) cultural approaches to medical geography. Furthermore, health inequality is one of the main concerns of health geographers, which includes consideration for ‘different geographies’. Accordingly, GIS can play a major role in several areas of health geography. However, the role, or perspective, of place (i.e., physical space, cultural space, social perspective of space, and so on) can influence how the technology is used to examine different phenomena, and this is something we should keep in mind when forming our understanding from these studies.
Keywords: Medical Geography, Health Geography, and Environmental Justice.