The topic of today’s lecture was an introduction to health geography. Considered to be an improvement by some over “medical geography”, health geography is concerned with not simply epidemiology, but also the spatial analysis of access to and quality of healthcare, and has a variety of applications, such as optimal ambulance routing.

Health geography can be divided into three main areas: disease ecology, healthcare delivery, and environment and health.

Disease ecology studies the geographical spread of infectious diseases.

Healthcare delivery analyzes the efficacy of modern healthcare systems and how they deal with and are impacted by geography. For example,this can include average patient distance from hospitals, or travel times from high injury rate areas to treatment centres.

Environment and health is a branch of geography that studies how place can impact one’s health. An example would be how proximity to a coal plant is correlated with issues such as lung disease.