Health geography is the expansion of the discipline of medical geography. It places a huge emphasis on the role of place rather than space. That is, it looks at the unique characteristics of particular places beyond the general spatial variations in health care provisions. Hence, health geography addresses issues regarding the access to and the location of and utilization of health facilities, the use of quantitative techniques for spatial analysis in health care planning, or the socio-political determinants of health and access to health care.

There are five strands of health geography:

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’
5. Cultural approaches to ‘medical geography’