Welcome!

Good evening and welcome to my Geography of Health Blog, where I illustrate some concepts covered during the fall 2013 semester. In this blog, you will find definitions of important health geography terms and how they relate to three health issues that affect people around the world.

Agency

"Most modern scholars argue that the environment offers opportunities and imposes constraints, but that human free will and ability, or human agency, allows people to make choices within this framework" (Hazen & Anthamatten)

Agency is the ability to act on your own (Dovovan 2013).

Stigma

Stigma, like subjectivity, is how others view you but unlike subjectivity, stigma refers to the shame associated with specific qualities or characteristics.

Mental Health 

Pink Armenia: HIV

Scale

Scale = the size at which a problem or issue is analyzed (Donovan, 2013). Scale is a tool used to see how certain health issues affect people from inside the body to Earth as a whole. Scales can also interact with each other in many different ways.

                                                 Body

Skeleton Dance

 Household

The Simpsons House

Local

Streets of San Francisco

                               

                              Regional

                                     California

National

United States

                            International

International Businesses

Global

From You Flowers

Infectious Disease

Infectious Disease = A disease that is communicable and transmissible (spreads person to person). Can by asymptomatic carriers. Pathogens include viruses, bacteria, fungi, protozoa, parasites, and prions.
- Sometimes, all you can do is limit the spread

Infectious Disease Sign

Infectious vs Chronic

Infectious Diseases

Political Ecology

Political Ecology = Enter into equation politics and what people do, not just environment leading to health. This theory includes the physical environmental  but takes it a step forward by taking into account a regions government and social environment when looking at health.

Drive-Belt Metaphor

Political Ecology

Environmental Determinism

Environmental Determinism is defined as the health conditions, body types, and personalities are directly attributed to environmental factors, especially climate. 
Environmental Determinism








Elephant in the Room