Medical Geography, Third Edition

by Meade, Melinda S.; Emch, Michael

• ISBN13: 9781606230169
• ISBN10: 1606230166
• Edition: 3rd
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-04-20
• Publisher: The Guilford Press

Summary

This essential text surveys the perspectives, methodologies, and theories that geographers use to address the subject of human health and disease. Wide ranging and international in scope, the volume synthesizes knowledge from across the social, physical, and biological sciences.

Author Biography

Melinda S. Meade, a medical geographer, is Professor of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is also Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology, a member of the Institute of Environment, and a fellow of the Carolina Population Center. In addition to the first and second editions of Medical Geography, Dr. Meade has published journal articles on the disease ecology of tropical Asia and the United States. She is a member of the Association of American Geographers and other geographic, Asian studies, and population associations.

 

Michael Emch, a medical geographer, is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he directs the Spatial Health Research Group. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor of Epidemiology and a fellow of the Carolina Population Center. Dr. Emch has published journal articles on disease ecology, primarily of infectious diseases of the tropical world. He is a member of the Association of American Geographers and is also an advisory editor for the international journal Social Science and Medicine.

Table of Contents

Questions of Medical Geography	p. 1
What's in a Name?	p. 2
A Brief History of Medical Geography	p. 9
Definitions and Terminology	p. 17
The Challenge of Medical Geography	p. 21
References	p. 22
Further Reading	p. 24
The Human Ecology of Disease	p. 26
Health	p. 27
The Triangle of Human Ecology	p. 30
Transmission and Creation of Infectious Disease	p. 44
Nutrition and Health	p. 55
Conclusion	p. 65
References	p. 65
Further Reading	p. 67
Biological Classifications of Importance to Health	p. 68
Maps and Geographic Information Systems in Medical Geography	p. 73
Cartography of Disease	p. 74
Types of Maps: Some Issues	p. 77
Geographic Information Systems	p. 83
Disease Maps on the Web	p. 91
Conclusion	p. 93
References	p. 94
Further Reading	p. 95
Landscape Epidemiology	p. 98
Regions	p. 99
Transmissible Disease Systems	p. 100
The Landscape Epidemiology Approach	p. 110
The Cultural Dimension of Water-Based Disease Transmission	p. 116
The Cultural Ecology of Tick-Borne and Other Transmissible Diseases	p. 131
Regionalization	p. 136
Ecological Complications	p. 138
Conclusion	p. 142
References	p. 142
Further Reading	p. 143
Field Mapping for Landscape Epidemiology	p. 145
Transitions and Development	p. 149
Ecologies of Population Change: Multiple Transitions	p. 150
Major Impacts of Population Change	p. 162
Nutrition in Transition	p. 165
The Mobility Transition and Time-Space Geography	p. 168
Disease Ecologies of the Agricultural Frontier	p. 173
Other Development Impacts on Rural Ecologies	p. 180
World Urbanization and Changing Disease Ecologies	p. 184
Globalization of Movements	p. 192
Conclusion: Emerging Diseases in Your Future	p. 195
References	p. 196
Further Reading	p. 199
Age Standardization	p. 201
Microspatial Exposure Analysis	p. 204
Climate and Weather: Influences on Health	p. 207
Direct Biometeorological Influences	p. 209
The Influences of the Weather	p. 215
Seasonality of Death and Birth	p. 221
How Climate Change Is Likely to Affect Health and Disease	p. 227
Conclusion	p. 232
References	p. 234
Further Reading	p. 236
Monthly Indexes	p. 236
Seasonality of Birth	p. 238
Physical Zonation of Climates and Biomes	p. 244
The Pollution Syndrome	p. 247
Toxic Hazards of Natural and Economic Origins	p. 248
Outdoor Air Pollution	p. 249
Indoor Air Pollution	p. 259
Water Pollution	p. 260
Radioactive Pollution	p. 265
Risk Assessment and Prevention	p. 271
Globalization and the Perception of Health Hazards	p. 272
The Geometry of Hazards, Power, and Policy	p. 274
Conclusion	p. 276
References	p. 276
Further Reading	p. 279
Political Ecology of Noncommunicable Diseases	p. 281
The Dimension of Mortality	p. 283
The Poverty Syndrome	p. 288
Race in the Study of Health Risks	p. 292
Gender: Women's Health	p. 294
Causal Reasoning and Epidemiological Design	p. 300
Disease Ecology: Cancer	p. 304
Disease Ecology: Cardiovascular Disease	p. 314
Unknown Etiology and Other Questions	p. 325
The Precautionary Principle and Some Political Ecology of Research	p. 329
Conclusion	p. 333
References	p. 334
Further Reading	p. 337
Neighborhoods and Health	p. 339
The Concept of Neighborhood Health	p. 339
Neighborhood Definition and Units	p. 341
Analyzing Neighborhood Effects on Health	p. 345
Effects of the Built Environment on Health	p. 346
The Challenges of Neighborhood Health Studies	p. 347
Conclusion	p. 348
References	p. 348
Further Reading	p. 350
Disease Diffusion in Space	p. 351
Terminology	p. 352
Disease Diffusion	p. 358
Modeling Disease Diffusion	p. 359
Influenzas	p. 375
Geographic Approaches to the Pandemic of AIDS	p. 380
Other Epidemics	p. 398
References	p. 398
Further Reading	p. 401
Diffusion Waves or Stochastic Simulation of Individual Contact?	p. 403
Health Care and Promotion	p. 407
Asclepius: Provision of Medical Care	p. 409
Asclepius Unrobed: Cultural Alternatives and Perceptions	p. 431
Hygeia: Health Promotion	p. 442
References	p. 444
Further Reading	p. 447
Application of Spatial Statistics to Health Care Delivery	p. 448
Scale, Spatial Analysis, and Geographic Visualization	p. 453
Some Issues of Scale	p. 454
The Ecological Fallacy	p. 454
Scale of Analysis and Units of Observation	p. 455
Sources for Spatial Disease Data	p. 458
Visualizing and Summarizing Disease Distributions	p. 459
Spatial Analysis	p. 463
Spatial Statistics	p. 466
Conclusion	p. 468
References	p. 468
Further Reading	p. 469
Chi-Square Statistical Test	p. 471
Regression Analysis	p. 474
Spatial Autocorrelation	p. 479
Concluding Words	p. 483
Index	p. 486
About the Authors	p. 498
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