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Synonyms

Medical geography

Definition

Geography is the study of the Earth as the home of human kind. Health geography is the study of the distribution, diffusion, determinants, and delivery associated with health and health systems in human populations. The unique aspect of examining health and health systems from a geographic perspective is the use of a spatial lens that allows for investigation across of a range of scales, from the local (e.g., neighborhood) to the global.

Description

Your health depends upon a lot of factors: genetics, access to health-care facilities, whether or not you exercise, how many fruits and vegetables you eat, and so on. But there is another very important determinant of health often ignored, and that is where we live. We occupy different locations in the world, and in the course of our everyday lives, we move from place to place (the place that we live, the place where we work/go to school, the places we recreate), and these places have a substantial...

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Correspondence to Susan Elliott .

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© 2014 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

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Elliott, S. (2014). Health Geography. In: Michalos, A.C. (eds) Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_1248

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_1248

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht

  • Print ISBN: 978-94-007-0752-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-94-007-0753-5

  • eBook Packages: Humanities, Social Sciences and Law

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