Class 1- Health Geography Basics

Question 1

What is Health Geography

Answer 1

• Subdiscipline of geography
  
  • Focus on population health topics
    
    • More similar to a public health approach than medical or clinical care
  • Examines an extremely broad range of health-related topics/issues
    
    • e.g., infectious/chronic disease, environmental factors, healthy behaviors, access to healthcare
• Formerly: Medical Geography

Question 2

Defining Health

Answer 2

• Defining “health” is not trivial
  
  • Ralph Audy, 1971
    
    • “Health is a continuing property that can be measured by the individual’s ability to rally from a wide range and considerable amplitude of insults, the insults being chemical, physical, infectious, psychological, and social. One might prefer the term “stimuli” or “hazards” to “insults.” Such stimuli may be either negative or positive: The crucial thing is that the individual must respond to them.”
• Important to consider health as a continuum
  
  • Not binary
    
    • Perfect health or complete absence of health
  • Continuous property
    
    • People generally fall somewhere in between the two extremes

Question 3

What is Geography

Answer 3

• Geograpny is a broad discipline
  
  • Many ways to group geographers
    
    • Human
      
      • e.g., urban, economic, critical theory
    • Physical
    • Human/Environment
    • Geospatial Technology
      
      • e.g., GIScience, geoinformation

Question 4

Core questions in Geography

Answer 4

• Where?
  
  • Location and/or distribution of phenomena
  • Differences among places
• Why there?
  
  • Migration and diffusion
  • Links among phenomena

Question 5

Congenital

Answer 5

present at birth

Question 6

Chronic

Answer 6

disease is present or occurs over a long time

Question 7

Acute

Answer 7

disease with a short course, severe symptoms of chronic disease

Question 8

Degenerative

Answer 8

deterioration of an organ or cells

Question 9

Infectious

Answer 9

disease results from activities of living creatures inside the body

Question 10

Contagious

Answer 10

disease that can be transferred from person to person, either directly via physical contact or indirectly (e.g., insect vectors)

Question 11

Stages of Infection

Answer 11

• Clinical: symptoms present
• Subclinical: symptoms not yet present
• Incubation: time for infectious agent to adapt to host and multiply
  
  • Contagious, once incubation occurs
• Latency: time between infection and appearance of symptoms

Question 12

Endemic

Answer 12

disease is constantly present in an area

● Hypoendemic: disease is present in low levels

● Hyperendemic: disease is present in high levels

Question 13

Epidemic

Answer 13

when disease occurrence is at levels clearly beyond expectation

Question 14

Prevalence/Incidence

Answer 14

– Prevalence: number of people (or rate) having a disease at a certain point in time (regardless of when disease was contracted)

– Incidence: number of new cases/people (or rate) contracting the disease during a specific time interval (e.g., a year)