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Health Geography (health + geography)
Selected AbstractsMeasuring Fatness, Governing Bodies: The Spatialities of the Body Mass Index (BMI) in Anti-Obesity PoliticsANTIPODE, Issue 5 2009Bethan Evans Abstract:, The Body Mass Index (BMI) is the dominant means of defining and diagnosing obesity in national and international public health policy. This paper draws on geographical engagements with Foucault's work on biopower and governmentality to question the power afforded the BMI in obesity policy. With reference to a UK public health intervention involving the measurement of children's bodies within schools, the paper questions the multiple materialities and spatialities of the BMI with reference to both its role in the construction of geographies of obesity and its (in)ability to capture the fleshy, material, and experiential bodies of those individuals involved in the process of measurement. The paper contributes to poststructuralist health geographies through writing fleshy, active bodies into a Foucauldian reading of health and illness, thus questioning the justifications and implications of an obesity politics focussed on the BMI. [source] A vitally human medical geography?NEW ZEALAND GEOGRAPHER, Issue 2 2007Introducing Georges Canguilhem to geographers Abstract:, This paper discusses Georges Canguilhem (1904,95), a French historian of science and medicine, tracing themes in his work of normality, pathology and the situated bases of medical decision-making. His conception of the normal and the pathological prompts reconsideration of the move from medical to health geography, suggesting value in a ,return' to the former. His ideas embrace openness to vitalism, a focus on the processes of life that anticipates recent attempts to engage with ,lively' (post-human) geographies. His dialogue between vitalism and humanism, with reference to the ,felt' unwellness of the sick person, signals a path towards a vitally human medical geography. [source] Incorporating geographies of health into public policy debates: The GeoHealth LaboratoryNEW ZEALAND GEOGRAPHER, Issue 2 2007Jamie Pearce Abstract:, The restricted influence of geographers in the policy arena has been the source of some angst. This paper reports on a new initiative at the University of Canterbury, which aims to strengthen geography's contribution to health policy debates in New Zealand. The GeoHealth Laboratory is a joint initiative between the Department of Geography and Public Health Intelligence group at the Ministry of Health that seeks to provide a pathway for the integration of health geography research into policy development. This new facility aligns the expertise in health geography, GIS and other spatial analytical methods with policy-relevant research priorities. An overview of the strategic aims of the GeoHealth Laboratory is provided along with some examples of recent research activities that are contributing to understandings of the health landscape in New Zealand. It is argued that such partnerships provide important opportunities for geographers to engage with policy-relevant issues. [source] Towards a more place-sensitive nursing research: an invitation to medical and health geographyNURSING INQUIRY, Issue 4 2002Gavin J. Andrews During recent years, nursing research has adopted and integrated perspectives and theoretical frameworks from a range of social science disciplines. I argue however, that a lack of attention has been paid in past research to the subdiscipline of medical geography. Although this may, in part, be attributed to a divergence between research priorities and foci, traditional ,scientific' geographical approaches may still be relevant to a wide range of nursing research. Furthermore, a recasting, redirecting and broadening of medical geography in the 1990s, towards what is termed health geography, has enhanced the discipline and provided a more cultural and expansive recognition of health, and a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamic relationship between people, health and place. Given the increasing range of places where health-care is provided and received, and some recent linkages made between nursing and place by nurse-theorists, these newer perspectives and concepts may be particularly useful for interpreting nurses' and patients' relationships both within and with a variety of healthcare settings and living spaces. Indeed, although a more place-sensitive nursing research is potentially a trans-disciplinary academic endeavor, a range of geographical approaches would be central to such a project. [source] A logic of care beyond health geographyAREA, Issue 1 2010Beth Greenhough No abstract is available for this article. [source] Narrative analysis as a strategy for understanding interview talk in geographic researchAREA, Issue 1 2005Janine L Wiles Narrative analysis produces strategies to inform the conduct, interpretation and presentation of interview talk, and encourages and enables researchers to take account of research participants' own evaluations. We suggest this to be a useful method for geographers because it focuses on how people talk about and evaluate places, experiences and situations, as well as what they say. With an example from health geography, we show how it allows for interactive texts, thus providing a tool for geographers doing qualitative research to connect intimate details of experience to broader social and spatial relations. [source] | ||||||||||