Health Geography - Overview

Overview

The study of health geography has been influenced by a shift from a medical model to a social model, which advocates for a redefinition of health and health care away from prevention and treatment of illness to one of promoting well-being. Under this model, new illnesses (e.g., mental ill health) are recognised, and other types of medicine (e.g., complementary or alternative medicine) are combined with traditional medicine. This shift changes the definition of care, no longer limiting it to spaces such as hospitals or doctors offices. Also, the social model gives primacy to the intimate encounters performed at spaces of non-traditional medicine and care as well as to the individuals as health consumers.

This alternative methodological approach means that medical geography is broadened to incorporate philosophies such as Marxian political economy, structuralism, social interactionism, humanism, feminism and queer theory.