Health issues such as the emergence of infectious diseases, the potential influence of global warming on human health, and the escalating strain of increasing longevity and chronic conditions on healthcare systems are of growing importance in an increasingly peopled and interconnected world. A geographic approach to the study of health offers a critical perspective to these issues, considering how changing relationships between people and their environments influence human health. An Introduction to the Geography of Health provides an accessible introduction to this rapidly growing field, covering theoretical and methodological background. The text is divided into three sections which consider distinct approaches and techniques related to health geographies. Section one introduces ecological approaches, with a focus on how natural and built environments affect human health. For instance, how have irrigation projects influenced the spread of water-borne diseases? How can modern healthcare settings, such as hospitals, affect the spread and evolution of pathogens? Section two discusses social aspects of health and healthcare, considering health as not merely a biological interaction between a pathogen and human host, but as a process that is situated among social factors which ultimately drive who suffers from what, and where disease occurs. Section three then considers spatial techniques and approaches to exploring health, giving special focus to the growing role of cartography and geographic information systems (GIS) in the study of health. This clearly written text contains a range of pedagogical features including a wealth of global case studies, discussion questions and suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, a colour plate section and over eighty diagrams and figures. The accompanying website also provides presentations, exercises, further resources, and tables and figures. This book is an essential introductory text for undergraduate students studying Geography, Health and Social Studies.

In the second edition of An Introduction to the Geography of Health, Helen Hazen and Peter Anthamatten explore the ways in which geographic ideas and approaches can inform our understanding of health. The book’s focus on a broad range of physical and social factors that drive health in places and spaces offers students and scholars an important holistic perspective on the study of health in the modern era. In this edition, the authors have restructured the book to emphasize the theoretical significance of ecological and social approaches to health. Spatial methods are now reinforced throughout the book, and other qualitative and quantitative methods are discussed in greater depth. Data and examples are used extensively to illustrate key points and have been updated throughout, including several new extended case studies such as water contamination in Flint, Michigan; microplastics pollution; West Africa’s Ebola crisis; and the Zika epidemic. The book contains more than one hundred figures, including new and updated maps, data graphics, and photos. The book is designed to be used as the core text for a health geography course for undergraduate and lower-level graduate students and is relevant to students of biology, medicine, entomology, social science, urban planning, and public health.

Setting out the debates and reviewing the evidence that links health outcomes with social and physical environments, this new edition of the well-established text offers an accessible overview of the theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and research in the field of health geography Includes international examples, drawn from a broad range of countries, and extensive illustrations Unique in its approach to health geography, as opposed to medical geography New chapters focus on contemporary concerns including neighborhoods and health, ageing, and emerging infectious disease Offers five new case studies and an fresh emphasis on qualitative research approaches Written by two of the leading health geographers in the world, each with extensive experience in research and policy

Tourism is an astonishingly complex phenomenon that is becoming an ever-greater part of life in today’s global world. This clear and engaging text introduces undergraduate students to this vast and diverse subject through the lens of geography, the only field with the breadth to consider all of the aspects, activities, and perspectives that constitute tourism. Indeed, geography and tourism have always been interconnected, and Velvet Nelson reinforces the relationship between them by using both human and physical geography to interpret all facets of tourism—economic, social, and environmental. She shows how geography provides the tools and concepts to consider both the positive and negative factors that affect tourists and destinations as well as the effects tourism has on both peoples and places. Her real-world case studies, based both on research and on the experiences of tourists themselves, vividly illustrate key issues. This comprehensive, thematically organized introduction will enhance students’ understanding of geographic concepts and how they can be used as a way of viewing and understanding the world.

Health Geographies: A Critical Introduction explores health and biomedical topics from a range of critical geographic perspectives. Building on the field’s past engagement with social theory it extends the focus of health geography into new areas of enquiry. Introduces key topics in health geography through clear and engaging examples and case studies drawn from around the world Incorporates multi-disciplinary perspectives and approaches applied in the field of health geography Identifies both health and biomedical issues as a central area of concern for critically oriented health geographers Features material that is alert to questions of global scale and difference, and sensitive to the political and economic as well sociocultural aspects of health Provides extensive pedagogic materials within the text and guidance for further study

The fifth edition of this widely used text provides a global overview of the major topics within human geography, including food security and population, geopolitics and territory, inequality and power, production, consumption, the global financial system, governance and now a new chapter on citizenship. Substantial and comprehensively updated chapters ensure balanced treatment across the range of contemporary human geography.