Place and Health: Towards a Reformed Medical Geography∗

Abstract

An engagement with public health concerns and aspects of social theory such as the structure/agency debate is crucial to medical geography. The imperatives underlying this engagement center on place, a geographical concept which is prominent in both social theory and recent health philosophy. Without detracting from its distinguished heritage, this reformed medical geography will analyze issues such as the consequences of illness and health service provision for both personal well‐being and the collective experience of place by communities.

Saúde: fundamentos de Geografia humana

“…Mas o paradigma da análise espacial começou a perder força nas pesquisas em Geografia médica, a partir da primeira metade da década de 1970, quando novas questões passaram a ser formuladas com base nos referenciais teóricos da Geografia humana pós-estruturalista (Kearns;Gesler, 1998). Assim como na Epidemiologia, a Geografia da saúde teve que se haver com seus próprios postulados positivistas no que se refere às potencialidades de leitura da realidade.…”

“…), referindo--se à estruturação de espécies de complexos tecnopatogênicos. Com base nesses autores, Curto de Casas (1985;1993) discute a existência, no momento atual, de dois circuitos ou modelos interdependentes: o do sistema patogênico da pobreza e o sistema patogênico da industrialização.…”

“It's your whole way of life really”: negotiating work, health and gender

“…To develop our understanding of these interdependent dimensions we frame the following reading of our data by considering work, gender and health through two analytical devices proposed by Kearns (1993Kearns ( , 1997: namely, considerations of place and metaphor. Kearns' interest in socio-ecological approaches to health (over biomedical science) enables him to contend that 'place' is an important, multiply constituted concept which can aid interpretations of health.…”

Asiatic cholera and dysentery on the Oregon Trail : a historical medical geography study

“…The second process begins with the development of a disease within the urban ghetto environment, a low income urban community situated in the center of a potential epidemic region, followed by a hierarchical diffusion process (Figure 7). For both Asiatic cholera and dysentery, an important sociological and human geographical interpretation of disease models has paid particular attention to income status as one of the most important role in understanding the disease diffusion process (Eyles and Woods 1983, Meade, Florin, and Gesler 1988, Earickson et al 1989, Jones and Moon 1991, Gesler and Ricketts 1992, Keams 1993, Keams and Gesler 1998 This link between social cohesion and epidemic disease behaviors is not new and has been heavily promoted during the past decades by Wilkinson (1973Wilkinson ( , 1986Wilkinson ( , 1994Wilkinson ( , 1996 …”