This presentation explores the multifaceted factors influencing health disparities, particularly among African Americans. It examines the impact of geography, policy, economic stability, neighborhood conditions, healthcare access, and social drivers on health outcomes. By highlighting historical and structural roots, such as the racial wealth gap and systemic racism, the presentation...
Background: Reproductive health inequalities persist in rural areas, particularly among marginalized communities like the Meo-Muslim population, due to various socio-cultural and economic factors. This study aims to identify and comprehend the distinct reproductive health obstacles facing Meo-Muslim women in study area.
Objectives: The research has two main objectives: firstly, to...
Prior research acknowledges that residence in an ethnic enclave significantly impacts health outcomes, potentially providing a protective buffer for individuals residing in these communities. This study aims to expand this perspective by hypothesizing that a long-term residence in an ethnic enclave may have a protective effect against late-stage breast cancer (BC) diagnosis for Hispanic/Latina...
Our discipline recognizes the vast influence that the built environment can have on public health and seeks to improve this understanding, both for health and urban planning policy. Such built environment domains include access to health facilities, (un)healthy food outlets, physical activity facilities, and active/passive transport availability, as well as exposure to burdensome issues such...
Introduction
The rising prevalence of non-communicable diseases, especially in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), highlights the need for research into their determinants. Limited data and methodological challenges hinder LMIC studies on neighbourhood health determinants. Computer vision (CV), powered by deep learning, can identify visual objects and understand what they are. CV...
This study designed a research protocol for the exploration of health inequities against black communities and the contribution of urban water crisis to health inequities in the Jackson region, MS. In addition to mental and physical health status, nine health outcomes of diseases were first applied to the spatial differentiation analysis based on the prevalence at the census tract level...
Research in the global north consistently documents the existence of a ‘healthy immigrant effect’ (HIE) wherein recent immigrants are found to be healthier, as measured by chronic conditions, higher life expectancy, and lower morbidity than their long-term immigrant and native-born counterparts. While research highlights the inequitable burden of COVID-19 among immigrants, little is known...
Vulnerable groups at the margins of societies in Europe, such as people experiencing homelessness and Roma people, often live in deprived areas and under problematic conditions, excluded from access to safe drinking water, sanitation, hygiene (WASH) and waste management. Understanding the extent of related high health risk, and providing assistance through targeted interventions, are...
In today’s rapidly advancing technological landscape, pervasive computing is increasingly common. As devices become smaller and more powerful, they seamlessly integrate into daily life, forming an omnipresent digital environment. This environment facilitates access to knowledge, social connections, commercial activities, and more. Despite its longstanding presence in literature, the concept of...
Objectives: Contemporary research on the exposome, i.e. the sum of all the exposures an individual encounters throughout life and that may influence human health, bears the promise of an integrative and policy-relevant research on the effect of environment on health. Considering critical analyses of the first generation of exposome projects, the emergence of the European Human Exposome Network...
Although low-income areas are often designated food deserts, small independently owned food retail stores can act as a crucial access point for low-income areas by providing affordable, healthy food options, and even fostering an equitable and sustainable food system in these communities. However, there remain uncertainties regarding whether communities that solely rely on small groceries...
Climate-related impacts on the ocean are increasingly jeopardizing coastal communities’ health by impacting their livelihoods, food security, and cultural heritage. These impacts are particularly acute among small-scale fishers in the Global South. Fishing communities hold valuable local knowledge about sociocultural structures and natural resource management. This knowledge has been crucial...
Illegal artisanal gold mining (galamsey) accounts for about 40% of Ghana’s gold production and is an important contributor to the economy. However, it has significant negative impacts on the environment that are not well-documented. Using remote sensing analysis of land cover changes and in-depth interviews of galamsey operators and community residents in 4 towns, this paper examines the...
Introduction
By crossing ecological boundaries and insufficient political agenda to protect the earth’s climate and biodiversity, the Anthropocene drives the earth into an uninhabitable planet. Despite years of efforts to raise understanding of Planetary Health and other holistic concepts that recognise human, animal, environmental, and ecosystem health as interdependent, urgently needed...
A housing unaffordability crisis is currently impacting many Torontonians. In 2016, it was found that an estimated one in five Canadian adults between the ages of 25 and 34 lived in unaffordable housing, defined as spending 30% or more of their pre-tax income on housing. Although the housing reality for Latinx immigrants in Toronto is unknown, research studying this population in other regions...
Fowl cholera is one of the most economically significant commercial poultry diseases, capable of causing 5-20 percent mortality in the early stages of the disease and a decrease in egg production. This study employs a case-control design utilizing an epidemiological approach to investigate the relationship between land cover and the odds of having fowl cholera outbreaks in midwestern poultry...
This study investigates the relationship between heat index (HI), built environment, socioeconomic status, social vulnerability index (SVI), and violent crimes in Baltimore in the summer from 2016 to 2022 through a univariate analysis using zero-inflated Poisson (ZIP) regression and spatiotemporal analysis using a spatiotemporal Bayesian hierarchical model. First, we found in univariate ZIP...
Among the emerging contaminants of concern (CECs), per- and poly-fluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have been widely detected in surface water across the United States. In the present study, we completed a reanalysis of seventy-five (75) PFAS samples across ten (10) major river basins and four (4) minor rivers in Alabama. Among them, the total summed concentrations of sixty-six (66) detected PFAS...
Abstract
Background: Dietary Diversity is a growing concern across the states of India. There is scarcity of studies that stressed on diversity of diet in men. Therefore, this study investigates the socioeconomic and spatial disparities in Low Dietary Diversity (LDD) prevalence among men in India collecting data from the 5th round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5),...
Background
Stress is omnipresent in our everyday lives and a key risk factor of our physical and mental health. Yet little is known about the impact of geographic life environments, linked to our daily activities and mobility patterns, on our momentary and daily stress levels.
Objectives
We propose this review to gather evidence on the spatio-temporal determinants of momentary or...
Health geographers have been shifting the allied fields of human geography, epidemiology, and public health towards research designs that account for both space and time. Longitudinal designs are recognized as superior to cross-sectional designs given their ability to infer casual relationships and fore/backcast the role of socio-environmental determinants of health outcomes. While traditional...
The healthcare system of South Korea has rapidly and successfully implemented easily accessible and affordable medical services through its universal healthcare programs under control of central government. The level of healthcare services has expanded in both terms of quantity and quality, but its landscape of healthcare provision has changed raising concerns about the spatial disparity in...
Grocery shopping is an important household labor closely related to die quality and health outcomes. Like other household tasks, it is usually unequally divided within households, with women doing more grocery shopping, which causes burden and health impacts on them. However, classic volume-based indicators of gender gaps (usually activity frequency and duration) are unable to sufficiently...
Nature and water hold value for human well-being at different levels, and exposure to natural and built blue and green spaces enhances physical and mental health outcomes. Blue and green spaces in urban areas provide therapeutic services by promoting emotional attachment and identity, and relief from everyday stress while also offering regulating ecosystem services. The rapid pace of global...
Food banks and food pantries play a pivotal role in supporting food security among low-income households in the United States. According to Feeding America, 49 million people (or 1 in 6 residents) in the U.S. used charitable food agencies in 2022. Despite this widespread usage, comparatively few studies have analyzed the spatial distribution of food pantry sites and their spatial accessibility...
Introduction
The WHO has developed a new conceptual model of healthy ageing (WHO 2015). Rather than considering healthy ageing from the perspective of the presence/absence of disease, this functioning-based approach is oriented towards developing and maintaining the functional ability that enables wellbeing in older age. This functional ability is linked both to the individuals and the...
Background:
Stress is a major public health concern, and a risk factor for 75-90% of diseases. An individual's daily activities take the form of a series of (im)mobilities (e.g., movements and places of activity) in various environments. According to the stress-restorative theory, exposure to everyday environments can contribute to stress or have restorative qualities. Yet the combination of...
Background: Transit burden is a little explored factor, though it is likely a key barrier to the care of many children. GIS technology has been used in the past to incorporate space and place into healthcare access. While such findings have generally concluded that disparities exist between groups and geographies, they have relied on data from ZIP codes and euclidean distance calculations as...
Background: As online food delivery service (OFDS) platforms gain popularity, understanding their impact alongside physical food outlets is important for addressing dietary quality. This study examined the associations of physical and online food outlet availability, independently and in combination, with dietary behaviours. We also explored how associations between physical outlet...
By the end of 2017, 35 local authorities (LAs) across England had adopted takeaway management zones around schools, within which planning permission was to be denied to new takeaways. In this nationwide, natural experimental study, we evaluated the impact of management zones on takeaway retail, including displacement to areas immediately beyond management zones. We used uncontrolled...
Geographic access to hospital-based acute care is a priority because farther travel times may lead to worse outcomes or even death. However, this relationship is not well-established outside of patients requiring trauma care. Despite a lack of empirical support, some policy guidelines and published studies utilize a threshold of 30-minutes to signify adequate access. In this work, we address...
Socio-demographic inequities in mental health were exaggerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, with women experiencing greater household burden with less support in Canada and globally. While these patterns have been observed globally, there is a research gap in rural mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada. We hypothesize that there is a disparity in mental health decline during the...
Financial austerity, the recent pandemic, and soaring living costs have increased the UK's food insecurity levels, with an estimated that 9 million adults in the UK (17% of households) experiencing food insecurity in June 2023. Food insecurity can lead to under and over-nutrition thus increasing the risks of various non-communicable diseases, including diabetes, hypertension, stroke,...
Purpose: This study investigated availability and quality of local early childhood education and care services and cross-sectional associations with mental health outcomes for all children entering their first year of full-time school in Melbourne, Australia.
Methods: We capitalise on a population linked dataset, the Australian Early Development Census – Built Environment, which...
White-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) (WTD) farms are distributed throughout Florida and number nearly 400. The Cervidae Health Research Initiative (CHeRI) is an initiative that investigates disease and health of farmed cervids statewide. Within the Florida industry, Epizootic Hemorrhagic disease virus (EHDV) and Bluetongue virus (BTV) are major causes of disease and associated economic...
Most of the literature examining associations between urban environments and mental health relies only on residential neighbourhoods to define exposure contexts, leaving aside the effects of non-residential environments such as the effects of landscapes along daily mobility paths. Our work offers an innovative geographically-explicit ecological momentary assessment approach (GEMA) to study...
Children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) may require specialized therapy or care not as widely available as other forms of care. Our objective was analyzing the distribution of four different types of healthcare services supporting children with ASD throughout the state of Missouri: applied behavior analysts (ABA), occupational therapists (OT), physical therapists (PT), speech...
Increasing bacterial resistance to multiple classes of antibiotics limits effective treatment options. Understanding spatial and temporal variation in resistance rates is important for informing empiric therapy, the prescribing of antimicrobials before lab-based susceptibility testing results are available to the provider. In particular, the use of cumulative susceptibility reports, also...
Policies aiming to prevent ill health and reduce inequalities in health need to consider the full complexity of health systems, including environmental determinants. Our objective was to establish privacy-preserving household record linkage for England, ensuring person-level health data remain secure and private when linked with data from households or the wider environment.
We held a...
OBJECTIVE: We examined associations between neighborhood built environment features and early childhood development, and the contribution of the built environment to associations between neighborhood disadvantage and early childhood development.
METHODS: Spatial neighborhood built environment measures were linked to participant addresses in the 2015 Australian Early Development Census...
Like many locations in the world the Government of Guinea implemented preventive steps to reduce the spread of COVID-19 in the absence of widely accessible vaccines. While these preventative efforts were essential in reducing infection rates, they had severe negative social, economic, and health impact on marginalized communities, affecting well-being and livelihoods. Unfortunately, there is a...
Cardiometabolic disorders refer to the presence of metabolic abnormalities such as obesity, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. The prevalence of cardiometabolic disorders in the United States is presumably linked to an obesogenic food environment that promotes unhealthy diets. However, past studies have reported mixed findings about the relationship between the two. One important...
Buruli ulcer or Mycobacterium ulcerans infection is a neglected tropical disease that causes necrotising skin lesions. The endemic areas most affected are located in West and Central Africa, where direct contact with stagnant open surface water has long been the only risk factor identified [1]. In these environments, aquatic bugs are strongly suspected of acting as hosts and vectors of the...
Introduction/purpose
Social prescribing (SP) involves a person being referred into a non-pharmacological community based intervention by a healthcare professional to support their health and wellbeing. In the UK and beyond, SP is expanding rapidly and garnering policy and research attention. Nature Based Social Prescribing (NBSP), involves a component of nature and has potential to affect...
Ecological niche models (ENMs), including several genetic algorithms and machine learning approaches, are used to prediction the distribution of Bacillus anthracis from local to global scales. Bacillus anthracis, the bacterial cause of anthrax, has a near global distribution limited by specific soil and environmental conditions constraining its range. As a spore-former, B. anthracis can...
The United States is experiencing rising rates of maternal morbidity and mortality. Postpartum hypertension-related complications account for the majority of maternal hospital readmissions within 1 year of delivery. We investigated the influence of access to care and neighborhood factors on the location and timing of postpartum hypertension-related readmissions within 12 weeks of delivery in...
Light pollution is a growing anthropogenic health threat, particularly in cities. Limited evidence suggests that exposure to outdoor night light may affect people’s mental health by disrupting sleep-wake cycles. We assessed 1) the association between outdoor night light exposure and adults’ symptoms of depression and anxiety and 2) the mediating role of sleep problems.
We acquired...
This paper reviews the history of the disease ecology tradition of health and medical geography summarizing the main themes and innovations since the 1950s. It then highlights two empirical examples of innovations including incorporating landscape genetics into the subfield and how ecological approaches are used in intervention research. Disease ecology is grounded in the field of health and...
This panel session will explore the rich history, significant milestones, and future opportunities and challenges within the field of Health and Medical Geography, highlighting the contributions of the International Medical Geography Symposium (IMGS) over the past 40 years. This session will provide a unique platform for reflection and forward-thinking discussions.
Join us for an insightful...
People who inject drugs (PWID) are at a high risk of transmitting blood-borne infection like HIV and hepatitis C due to injection practices. By studying travel patterns as related to drug use behaviors, we may better understand disease transmission spatially. This can inform the development of targeted intervention strategies such as the allocation and locations of prevention and treatment...
Over the past decade, knowledge translation (KT) has become an important component of health research in geography and beyond. Despite collective agreement about the importance of bridging knowledge to action in health geography research, gaps remain regarding how to do KT, and how KT can be leveraged to combat health inequities. This panel session will discuss KT research and activity with a...
Socio-economic deprivation continues to be a key driver of geographical inequalities in population health at all spatial scales. In England, significant public health challenges faced by coastal communities were highlighted in the Chief Medical Officer’s 2021 Annual Report. Poor health outcomes in these coastal communities are driven by multiple social and geographical determinants, including...
Abstract
Background: The impact of man-made disasters like war on healthcare systems can be profound and multifaceted, affecting infrastructure and human resources. One of the recent bloodiest and deadliest wars is the Tigray war in Northern Ethiopia, which lasted from November 2020 to November 2022. Approximately 90% of health facilities in the Tigray region were partially or...
This study investigates the accessibility of treatment facilities for Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) within Florida with particular emphasis on the traditional vulnerable communities or groups. The research uses several geospatial methods to examine how the number and location of OUD facilities distributed across space correlated with population characteristics in Florida. Within the framework of...
In this paper I argue that ‘epigenetic age’ measurements shape norms of health and aging by reaffirming that ‘healthy aging’ –measured by reversal of epigenetic age biomarkers–is based on personal responsibility and lifestyle. To do so, I draw on preliminary findings from participant observation research at a scientific conference in the field of biological gerontology, and at a diagnostic...
The COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected pediatric healthcare, leading to a
decline in emergency department visits and hospital admissions for children globally.
This decrease heightened the severity of cases, increasing reliance on Emergency
Medical Services (EMS). This study, focusing on Rhode Island from March 2018 to
February 2022, uses point-level locational data and spatial...
The opioid epidemic has been significantly impacted in the United States. To mitigate the drug abuse, spatial access to authorized medications for opioid use disorder (MOUDs) plays a crucial role. Nevertheless, there remains a dearth of comprehensive methodologies for assessing such accessibility. Questions arise regarding the permissible extent of travel, with considerations encompassing...
Residential segregation in the US has been associated with worse cognitive functioning in Black older adults, but the impact of segregation on Latinx individuals is less clear from published studies. We investigated whether Latinx individuals living in more segregated Latinx neighborhoods had worse brain health measured via magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). We analyzed data on 202...
Homeless substance users in Montreal, Canada face exceptional barriers to accessing essential resources for exiting homelessness: many homeless resources refuse individuals who are inebriated or who are dependent on drugs or alcohol, or they fail to stably house them. Addressing this gap in services, this research asks: what are the needs of homeless individuals who use substances to exit...
Background
Reflecting on the trajectory of COVID-19 from its emergence to its containment, it is evident that vaccination continues to be a potent strategy in mitigating its impact. However, vaccination rates exhibit notable disparities within and across nations. The uneven spread of vaccination sites leads to unequal access beyond supply issues. In the study, we estimated the vaccine...
The complexity of cities may pose challenges to those experiencing cognitive decline due to ageing. However, there is a dearth of studies on the effects of cognitive skills on individual spatial navigation in urban environment. We examined how cognitive skills (visuospatial working memory, selective attention and cognitive flexibility) moderate the associations between the built and natural...
Background. Neighbourhood gentrification has been found to be associated with health in general, but less is known about mental health and well-being, and how these relationships might differ between social groups. This scoping review asks (1) How is gentrification associated with mental health and well-being 2) Who is most affected by gentrification, and why?
Methods. This is the first...
The studies exploring neighborhood effects on population health are mostly quantitative, investigating the relationships between the physical, built-environment, and socioeconomic characteristics of neighborhood and health. The neighborhood characteristics, however, are often aggregated measures of an administrative unit (e.g., US census-tracts) calculated using national databases and GIS...
In 2020, maternal mortality in Texas was three times the US average but its geography and drivers remain unclear. Effective access to MCH services reduces maternal mortality but remains inequitable due to affordability and transportation costs particularly for rural residents and minority populations. Even in urban areas with better MCH facility access, vulnerable populations face challenges....
While disparities in Alzheimer's Disease and Alzheimer’s Disease Related Dementias (AD/ADRD) are well-documented, the underlying causal process explaining how and why these inequalities arise is less clear. Evidence suggests that potentially-modifiable individual factors, such as social isolation and physical inactivity, can significantly reduce one’s dementia risk. Much less attention,...
Little is known about the long-term relationship between prenatal exposure to green space and adolescent mental health. Using data from the TRAILS cohort (n=1,476; study period: 1989-2002), we assessed 1) associations between prenatal green-space exposure and four mental-health outcomes, namely externalising problems, internalising problems, tobacco use, and alcohol use, self-reported at...
We will introduce a digital tool, “Housing-Health-Disparities Visualizer (HHDV)”. This tool, among other functionalities, visualizes the association between poor mental health and discriminatory loan application denials at the county level in the U.S. HHDV’s primary goal is to highlight the impact of racial segregation, driven primarily by the discriminatory denial of housing on health...
Between March 1, 2020 and December 31, 2021 there were 1.7 million confirmed cases and 27,989 deaths due to COVID-19 among Michigan residents. Of all cases, 31.6% were among women of reproductive age (10-49 years). During the same time period there were 209,171 births in Michigan. In 2020 and 2021, preterm (< 37 weeks gestation) birth rates were 102.3 and 105.9 per 1,000 live births and rates...
The world is experiencing a global water crisis, with increasing water stress, pollution, frequent droughts and flooding, and stark inequities in access to water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH). In its roadmap to COVID-19 recovery, the United Nations recommends that researchers collaborate with local authorities and communities to ensure continuity and quality of water and sanitation services....
Globally and historically, Indigenous healthcare has been rooted in land-based medicine derived from knowledge systems connected to the environment. Across Turtle Island, processes of dispossession have uprooted Traditional Healing practices replacing them with colonial, hospital-based care, now characterized as places of harm for Indigenous Peoples. The need for effective mental wellness...
Equitable access to healthcare is regarded as a major indicator of improved health status of a country’s population. Various US governments have implemented series of policies to improve healthcare accessibility. However, historical racial segregation policies have led most of such efforts to be markedly skewed towards only a part of the population, creating disparities in healthcare...
Background: Emergency Obstetric and Newborn Care (EmONC) facilities are scarce in Ethiopia and concentrated in bigger cities. Using geospatial analysis, this study modeled the optimal locations for new EmONC facilities such that the maximum number of women could access EmONC facilities.
Methods: We used data from the 2016 EmONC Assessment encompassing 3,804 health facilities (including 370...
To better understand environmental challenges and advocate for improved policy and resources, communities need more accessible data, the ability to update their own stories, and carefully cultivated environmental justice (EJ) frameworks that strive to ensure that injustice is not reproduced in the research process itself. The EJ movement long holds a tradition of calling for place-based...
The Supply Concentric-Demand Accumulation (SCDA) index is a novel approach to assess the potential for populations in a specific area to access a health service. SCDA operates on the principle that a population's need for available services can only be met after the demand from other populations living closer to the facility has been met. This differs from other ways of estimating spatial...
Social isolation and loneliness have detrimental impacts on health, especially for older adults. During the COVID-19 pandemic, physical access to third places (e.g., coffee shops, libraries) decreased due to the closure of non-essential destinations and personal risk assessments. Older adults reported adopting information and communication technology (ICT) during pandemic lockdowns, which may...
In this talk, I present novel findings on the spatial distribution of residential green space in the continental U.S. along the axes of disability, race, and class. By considering disability, this work builds on and bridges scholarly research in two distinct domains: one quantifying disparities in green space access among racialized minorities and socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, and...
The covid-19 pandemic has undoubtedly exacted grave negative impacts on economies and health systems. Indeed, the World Bank projected global economic growth to shrink by 8% because of the pandemic with low-income countries bearing the brunt. While many national economies are struggling to recover from the ravages of the pandemic, the loss of sources of livelihoods by individuals and families...
This study investigates the spatial-temporal distribution patterns of lung cancer incidence in Bagmati province, Nepal, focusing on the potential association with particulate materials (PM2.5). Analyzing data from 2012 to 2021 reveals an increasing trend in crude cancer incidence rates, with notable municipal-level variations. Males consistently exhibit higher rates, particularly in...
Over 8 million patients who have experienced cancer face Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) challenges like food, housing, and financial insecurity that directly impact their health outcomes. While social distress screening has been useful for identifying social needs, patients cannot often fail to utilize resources. Therefore, we piloted a patient-centered social care referral platform to...
Background:
Everyone has to deal with stress on a daily basis. However, since stress is a risk factor for 75-90% of diseases, it has become a public health priority. According to the stress restorative theory, environmental factors may covey both stressful and restorative qualities. However, little is known on how in complex urban environments these stressors are experienced and in what...
The COVID-19 pandemic requested scientists design a more accurate model to forecast infectious disease spreading for enhanced preparedness. While the use of spatially explicit agent-based models for infectious diseases has gained ground during COVID-19, three-dimensional (3D) urban features were not fully incorporated in ABM modelling. Since the latest urban development pursues vertical...
The literature contains a plethora of spatial accessibility studies, but few examine actual cancer outcome data across multiple temporal cross-sections. Combining potential and revealed accessibility approaches can improve opportunities to generate evidence-based changes for cancer screening and treatment. This presentation will highlight findings from two research projects: (1) Disparities in...
Antibiotic resistance is recognized as one of the leading public health concerns in the 21st century. Among the various microbes that have developed antibiotic resistance, Escherichia coli is of particular concern due to its ubiquity and its role as a significant reservoir for resistance genes. To date, no study has provided a comprehensive examination of the geographic patterns in E. coli...
RTS,S/AS01 is the world’s first malaria vaccine to be licensed and undergo pilot implementation. However, the efficacy of the vaccine in young children is variable, ranging from 22% in Mozambique to 75% in Kenya. Initial evidence suggests that vaccine efficacy is lower in sites with high-malaria incidence. Potential mechanisms include a “rebound” effect where vaccinated children may have...
Introduction: Recently, nearly $80 million, including $25 million in public funds, were invested to revitalize downtown Sherbrooke, Canada, through the construction of office and residential towers, development of new public spaces and improvements of street aesthetics. These changes can improve residents’ social conditions and health, and reduce social inequalities in health. However, the...
Engaging knowledge-users within an integrated knowledge translation (iKT) research process enhances the relevance of research outputs and outcomes. During the COVID-19 pandemic, our research team surveyed an international sample (n=1,090) of lupus (a chronic autoimmune condition) patients to increase understanding of how they access and trust health information. While lupus specialists and...
Greenspace has been linked to health in a variety of ways, from having positive effects on mental health to being a potential mediating factor for asthma. However, greenspace is a broad term used to discuss anything from vegetation presence to park access. In this review we identify current uses of greenspace and greenspace measures to support standardized practices, replicable research, and...
Health and medical geography are critical lenses to understand the spatial dimensions of health disparities and inequities to inform evidence-based policy interventions. This panel brings together voices representative of community organizations, academia, and government agencies to explore the intersections of practice and policy within the realm of health geography. The panelists will share...
The travel restriction measures to reduce contacts during a pandemic, such as Covid-19, had inevitably altered the dynamics of a city as they were often applied in different strengths and at different stages of the pandemic, and led to structural changes of urban spatial interactions underlying disease spreading. A deeper comprehension of the dynamics of the spatial interaction structures is...
Interventions that promote active and sustainable transportation modes are critical to increasing everyday physical activity, mitigating climate change, improving population health, and reducing health inequity. However, understanding the origins of such interventions, where they get implemented, how they can be translated to new contexts, and who benefits from them, all remain under-explored....
Introduction/purpose of research
The association between accessing nature in a variety of ways and improved health outcomes is well established. However, the causal pathways in this relationship are less well understood. This rapid review considers the potential of connection to nature (CTN) in this association. Additionally, CTN is associated with environmental stewardship which has...
Despite the progress in access to WASH in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs), significant inequalities exist across space and place. This paper uses insights from feminist political ecology of health to explore the multi-scalar ways WASH inequalities expose women and girls to violence in their WASH spaces. We explore this issue using retrospective narratives from in-depth interviews with...
Geographers and other social scientists frequently utilize Census tracts to help map and understand the spatial distribution of urban health phenomenon. As a commonly accepted series of spatial units, Census tracts are bound up in scientific approaches to understanding urban health. This paper traces the origins and impetus of the Census tract system, setting the system in its theoretical and...
The San Francisco Bay Area, known for its concentration of well-educated individuals in high-paying jobs, ranks among the wealthiest cities in the United States. However, the post-COVID-19 landscape has posed significant challenges, including a notable population decline, widening economic disparities, rising crime rates, pervasive drug use and homelessness, and an increase in foreclosed and...
Evidence shows that the covid-19 pandemic contributed to increased domestic violence globally. Much of the literature, however, attribute the observed increased in violence to isolation and quarantine orders. In this study, we expand the narrative by investigating the connections between covid-19 induced changes in income and intimate partner violence (IPV) in Guinea. To achieve this, we...
Extreme heat contributes to 8,000 to 12,000 excess U.S. deaths per year. Partly due to increasing summer temperatures and a renewed focus on environmental justice, local governments started new initiatives to manage and adapt to extreme heat. For example, Miami-Dade County, Florida, U.S., appointed Jane Gilbert as the world’s first Chief Heat Officer. This manuscript summarizes Miami- Dade...
Lyme disease is the most common vector-borne disease in Europe and its vector, Ixodes ricinus is expanding its habitat range. Although the risk of tick-borne diseases is associated with rural forested areas, urban green spaces can also harbor tick populations. Due to the high number of visitors to urban green spaces and low risk awareness, it is hypothesized that the tick-borne disease risk...
The Community-Soil-Air-Water (CSAW) partnership is co-led by the Georgia State University Department of Geosciences and two community-based environmental advocacy organization that focus on environmental justice—ECO-Action and the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA) in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. In collaboration with other community-based organizations and higher education institutions in metro...
Lived Experience research is increasingly being used as a method to overcome blind spots that come from working in a singular discipline or paradigm. More recently Lived Experience is being used as a powerful tool for working with more marginalised groups to rebalance power dynamics and capture ‘hidden’ knowledge of what it is like to be from that community based on their experiences.
...
Despite expansion of HIV treatment and prevention programs in Uganda, new HIV diagnoses continue to occur. Identifying sources of new HIV diagnoses following the scale-up of HIV interventions may provide insights into the HIV transmission dynamics in declining African HIV epidemics. Here, we investigated sources of new diagnoses using HIV sequence and survey data from the Rakai Community...
Historical redlining has been associated with various adverse health outcomes in redlined, predominantly Black neighborhoods. Previous studies, however, generally have not considered neighborhood socio-demographic transformation processes, like gentrification, over time. We aimed to evaluate the collective association of household-level residential socio-spatial mobility, gentrification, and...
Infectious diseases linked to poverty, particularly neglected tropical diseases, have adversely affected the socio-economic development in less wealthy regions. One of the neglected tropical diseases of concern is human liver fluke infection through the consumption of raw freshwater fish. Despite decades of health campaigns, high infection prevalence remains in different areas of the Lower...
Anthrax is a widespread and underreported zoonosis caused by Bacillus anthracis. Outbreak dynamics associated with this spore-forming bacterium depend on the environment, as spores persist in soil for years causing delayed infections. Annual livestock vaccination is recommended to manage anthrax in humans and animals. We modeled the effects of different vaccination strategies on outbreak...
Background: Parks and recreational facilities are critically important places as they provide opportunities to connect with nature, pursue recreational activities, and facilitate social connections for the entire population. North American medical professionals are also considering the value of “park prescriptions” to address a wide range of chronic health conditions. However, there is a...
Background: One of the key factors contributing to high maternal death rate among women in India is inadequate utilisation of full ANC. Despite very low level of ANC coverage among mothers belonging to Schedule Castes, as compared to privileged groups, no study has focused on ANC utilisation among them at national-level.
Methods: Using data from the National Family Health Survey-5,...
Malaria, a prominent Vector Borne Diseases (VBD) causing over a million annual deaths worldwide, predominantly affects vulnerable populations in the least developed regions. Despite the increase in malaria control and elimination efforts, climatic and non-climatic factors continue to serve as important drivers of malaria transmission, which is highly variable in space and time. A vital aspect...
Takeaway food is widely accessible in neighbourhood food environments. Local authorities in England can adopt urban planning-based interventions to manage the opening of new takeaway outlets in ‘takeaway management zones around schools’ (‘exclusion zones’). Before adoption, local authorities undertake mandatory public consultation where food retailers can object to proposals. Evidence on...
Background: Antidepressant prescribing can act as a proxy for mental health conditions allowing spatial and statistical analysis to be undertaken at small area level. These data can complement national survey and hospital care data which are limited in size and typically available only at coarse geographies. This work aims to explore the spatial distribution of antidepressant prescribing in...
Over the last decade birth rates in Michigan and the United States have steadily declined while infant mortality rates (infant deaths < 1 year per 1,000 live births) have remained elevated (6.5 and 5.4 in 2022). Infant mortality rates among Black women are particularly high in Michigan (13.0) and the U.S. (10.7). There are two time periods in the first year of life when the event of death is...
Communities of practice (CoPs) play a vital role in fostering collective learning and innovation for health equity initiatives. This study delves into the significance of CoPs in addressing the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), focusing on the innovative SDOH & Place Project Community Toolkit.
The toolkit aims to empower community and civic organizations in accessing and utilizing SDOH...
Malaria remains one of the most significant diseases in the peripheral countries of the world's tropical and subtropical regions. In 2022, 131,224 cases were recorded in Brazil, 99% of which were in the country's northern region (Brazil, 2024). This study aimed to analyze the social and environmental determinants of malaria throughout the Brazilian Amazon in 2017-2022 and develop malaria...
Introduction: The accelerated rise in global surface temperatures and the occurrence of extreme climate events, driven by the emission of greenhouse gases, present a formidable global threat. The global health community has officially recognised climate change as a public health emergency due to its immediate effects on health resulting from storms, floods, droughts, and wildfires, as well as...
Over 38.4 million people have diabetes in the U.S. While diabetes is the 8th leading cause of death overall, prevalence varies among racial and ethnic groups. Residential segregation has been shown to be associated with disparities in diabetes rates, however no study has assessed temporal changes in diversity as linked with diabetes rates. This study examines the associations between racial...
Recent advances in molecular sequencing tools and analytical methods offer new opportunities for using pathogen whole genome sequencing (WGS) to infer who-infects-whom in infectious disease outbreaks. Here we use data from a WGS study of M. tuberculosis transmission in a city in Malawi with a high burden of tuberculosis (TB) and HIV to identify factors related to transmission. Specifically, we...
Women remain at elevated risk for some sports injuries, including ACL rupture and concussion. Research into gendered injury disparities has traditionally subscribed to a biomedical paradigm focused on the scale of the individual body as site of intervention. Informed by a health geography approach, this research applies a biosocial perspective to women’s sports injuries that situates injury...
Urban environments perceived as safe, pleasant, and walkable stimulate sustainable and healthy human behavior. However, obtaining in-situ data on the appearance of streetscapes and people’s perceptions of urban spaces is time-consuming, costly, and labor-intensive. To circumvent these limitations, AI-driven place assessments have gained momentum. Advances in AI and street view (SV) images...
Opioid overdose deaths have risen sharply in the United States over the past decade, presenting a growing public health crisis. According to the CDC In 2021, over 75% of the 107,000 drug overdose deaths involved an opioid. Identifying patients at risk for opioid use disorder remains challenging. To address this gap, we are analyzing the Texas Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) data on...
Climate change is affecting Indigenous peoples’ wellbeing, especially health. While the World Health Organization has introduced climate-resilient health systems to minimise climate-associated health risks, Indigenous communities are often neglected in due to their comparatively small population size. Given this context, we introduce a conceptual framework to improve climate-resilient health...
Background: Dog-transmitted human rabies is commonly linked to poverty, but few studies have formally investigated the relationship between local socioeconomic deprivation and canine rabies incidence. Moreover, the use of coarse spatial data (aggregated at the subnational level) has even led some to report an increased risk of canine rabies in low-poverty areas.
Methods: We...
The number of major floods resulting federal disaster declarations have increased in several US states. Estimated risk of flooding to residential properties alone are expected to increase by over 10% in the next 30 years. Our goal was to assess residents’ flood risk perception relative to flood plain risk. Surveys were mailed to households in Nebraska and Iowa in 2022. Because mailing and...
Objective
We aimed to systematically summarize the evidence for an association between GPS-based exposures to the retail food environment and diet-related and cardiometabolic health outcomes.
Methods
We performed a systematic search in PubMed, Embase.com, APA PsycInfo (via Ebsco), Cinahl (via Ebsco), the Web of Science Core Collection, Scopus, and the International Bibliography of the...
Background: Clostridioides difficile infection (CDI) represents a significant healthcare challenge, with the CDC estimating 500,000 annual cases in the United States, leading to substantial morbidity, mortality, and over $1 billion in healthcare costs.
Objective: This study aims to develop a methodology and algorithm to analyze the spatiotemporal movement of patients within a hospital,...
Ticks are the most prevalent vector species in the United States (Beard, Eisen, and Eisen, 2021). They are a common parasitic insect, which bite humans to receive sustenance from our blood. When they bite a human, they leave behind bacteria, viruses, and parasites, which can cause secondary infections and illnesses (Parola and Raoult, 2001). Despite knowing the impact that ticks can have on...
Mass vaccination is a cornerstone of public health emergency preparedness and response. However, injudicious placement of vaccination sites can lead to the formation of long waiting lines or queues, which discourage individuals from waiting to be vaccinated and thus jeopardize the achievement of public health targets. Queueing theory offers a framework for modeling queue formation at...
Keywords: inland flooding, flood-related health outcomes, geospatial flood risk, flood risk preparedness, emergency medicine
Climate change has the potential to impact environmental and human health via extreme weather events. Flooding is associated with infectious disease outbreaks, increased asthma, and worsened mental health. Previous studies have focused on coastal communities rather...
Firearm-related violence remains a pressing public health concern in the United States, with fatalities exceeding 350,000 over the past decade. The city of Baltimore has witnessed a sustained increase in firearm-related violence, emphasizing the urgency of addressing this issue. Understanding the systemic factors associated with firearm violence is crucial for effective intervention. This...
Breast cancer continues to be the dominant form of new cancers diagnosed in Iowa. Mammography screening is essential for early detection of breast cancer and has led to significant reductions in mortality. Spatial accessibility plays a vital role in determining whether women receive mammograms. Spatial accessibility examines the travel time along the road network between the patient’s home and...
Backgrounds
Parks and green spaces enhance mental health and provide areas for recreation and interaction. However, access to parks often varies by socio-economic status (SES), with individuals in rural areas or with low SES being particularly vulnerable. This ecological study explores how community-level access to parks correlates with the prevalence of depression in census tracts in...
Brucellosis is a global zoonosis caused by species of Brucella bacteria with high burden in underdeveloped countries. Kazakhstan, in Central Asia, reports high human/livestock burden, requiring high costs for animal testing and slaughter. Brucella spp. show high host affinity and vaccines are Brucella spp. specific. The risk of brucellosis transmission between commingling livestock and...
Research shows greenspaces significantly boost children’s health by promoting physical activity, reducing stress, and facilitating play and social interaction. The Child Opportunity Index (COI) score, which evaluates neighborhood potential to improve children’s health and reduce disparities, currently does not include greenspace in its metrics. Additionally, it does not explore seasonal...
Social and health indicators suggest that individuals experiencing marginalization within more impoverished urban neighbourhoods have disproportionate levels of daily and chronic stress, which can lead to socio-spatial disparities in chronic illness. Increasingly, research has recognized the place-based nature of stress and (community) resilience. Using an action-oriented and mixed methods...
INTRODUCTION: The global rise in the elderly population brings attention to the pressing issue of elder abuse, categorized into physical, psychological, neglect, financial and sexual abuse. According to the WHO (2022), 1 in 6 individuals aged 60 and older has experienced some form of abuse in community setting necessitating increase awareness and support for older people.
OBJECTIVE: This...
Introduction
Within Haiti, determining spatiotemporal and environmental patterns of mosquito abundance is critical for tailoring vector-borne disease control, as diseases such as dengue fever and lymphatic filariasis are endemic. Here we investigated the spatiotemporal and environmental patterns of Aedes aegypti, Ae. albopictus, and Culex quinquefasciatus abundance in...
Dengue, first reported in Nepal in 2004, occurred as large outbreaks in 2022 and 2023 (54,784 and 51,243 cases), with cases reported in every district (n=77). Initially confined to districts of the lower plains, dengue has spread to higher elevations and is now endemic. We used spatial analyses to map and describe incidence in Nepal in 2022 and 2023. Incidence was calculated for each district,...
Certificate of Veterinary Inspection (CVI) records, the official documents that prove the listed animals have been inspected and meet all federal requirements, are widely used in modeling animal movement between states. Commuter Herd Agreements (CHA), which document inter-state animal movements within the same ownership instead of using a CVI, have been mostly neglected in previous analyses....
The Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) region of Bangladesh poses significant challenges regarding healthcare accessibility, particularly in its remote and diverse topography. This study undertakes a comprehensive assessment of the prevailing gaps in medical accessibility across the CHT, with a specific focus on elucidating disparities linked to socioeconomic factors. Using Geographic Information...
System for Ontology Learning and Extraction (SOLE) aims to automate hazard-specific ontology construction from knowledge bases of disaster-related information (e.g., scholarly articles) through the use of ontology learning techniques. The hazard-specific ontologies that are extracted from knowledge bases of disaster-related information will provide planners, policymakers, and decision-makers...
Cities play important and critical role in the achievement of Sustainable Development Goal 3. However, the urbanization trend in Low Middle-Income Countries (LMICs) like Nigeria presents significant sustainable development challenge, particularly the striking urban health inequalities. It is well known that factors such as geography, social determinants of health, economic and health policies...
Background: Despite a decline in tobacco smoking, lung and bronchus cancer (LBC) remains a leading cause of cancer mortality, with increasing cases among non-smokers. This ecological study evaluates associations between geographic environmental factors and high LBC incidence areas in Pennsylvania, aiming to identify potential prevention strategies.
Methods: Case (PA Cancer Registry,...
Amazon River has the largest freshwater discharge into the world ocean. It exerts a profound influence on the composition of particulate organic matter over time and distance and in response to hydrological changes. We investigate the distribution of particulate carbon, C:N elemental ratio and δ¹³C values during three seasons in the surface and upper 100 m of the water column in areas of the...
Background
Psychological and physiological indices of momentary and chronic stress can be found in voice. In the context of Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), vocal biomarkers (VB) are a non-invasive and objective way to measure stress in daily life.
Methods
The FragMent study aims to evaluate how daily activities and exposure to various environments influence stress. The mobile...
The decennial census provides policy-makers, researchers, and various public and private entities with high-quality geographic and demographic information. Differential privacy (DP) refers to the process of introducing random error into publicly available data products such as the decennial census. The most recent update to the U.S. Census Bureau’s disclosure avoidance methodologies (DAS),...
The rural and semi-urban communities in sub-Sahara Africa share a disproportionately high burden of respiratory diseases due to residents’ exposure to polluted indoor environment. The current study investigated the indoor condition that constituted risks to morbidity of respiratory ailments in Yewa south communities of South-West Nigeria A multi-stage sampling procedure was employed to select...
Until now, the geography of health has shown little interest in tourist areas, apart from approaches linked to medical tourism. This communication focuses on the socio-spatial dimension of the health of tourism workers. This subject has received little attention in the social sciences given the relative invisibility of this population, due to the fact that work and holidays are antinomic...
In Canada, the demographic landscape of HIV/AIDS is shifting, with 1 in 5 new infections occurring in people 50+. This trend requires us to understand how to support older people living with HIV/AIDS (OPLWH) as they enter long-term care and assisted living (LTC/AL) in growing numbers. Despite recognition of their social and medical care needs, little consideration has been given to how LTC/AL...
In the United States, the burden of HIV infections disproportionately affects states in the South as well as Black and Hispanic populations. Whether and how the impacts of social determinants of health (SDOH) on new HIV diagnosis vary over geography and race/ethnicity have been underexplored at small-area levels such as zip code tabulation areas (ZCTA). This study applies a Bayesian...
Homicide and suicide are the twin pillars of intentional unnatural death, yet the relationship between them remains unclear. Prior research has shown positive, negative, and null relationships between suicide and homicide depending on the study area, spatial support, and time period. However, most of these studies used non-spatial statistics to analyze the data, ignoring the potential...
Indoor personal exposures to air pollution constitute a significant environmental risk factor of acute and chronic respiratory infections, which have a disproportionately high burden in the rural communities of sub-Sahara Africa. The current study characterized the concentrations of selected gaseous and particulate pollutants in indoor environment with a view to assess their respiratory...
Unintended pregnancies pose significant health risks, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, where millions of cases are recorded annually, disproportionately affecting adolescent women. This study aimed to assess the prevalence, distribution, and factors associated with modern contraceptive utilization among women aged 15-49 in Uganda. The study sample comprised 9,235 women aged 15-49 who used...
Background. Health care gentrification (HCG) is the process by which the type and spatial distribution of health care resources and services shift to favor wealthier residents while potentially excluding more vulnerable residents, leading to inequitable access to quality health care. We conducted a scoping review to explore how healthcare gentrification has been described in the scientific...
Ground-level ozone is a major air pollutant harmful for human health and there are concerns that ground-level ozone will increase under climate change despite efforts for a rigorous air pollution control. High levels of ground-level ozone often prevail in combination with heat events, e.g., under persistent anticyclones in summer. Due to climate change heat events such as hot days and heat...
Within cities, neighbourhoods engender and reflect health and social inequities, giving rise to vulnerability (e.g., during a pandemic) and inter-generational trauma and poverty for some communities. Neighbourhood settings can expose people to stressors (e.g., safety concerns) and provide resources for surviving and thriving (e.g., food banks and public recreation facilities, respectively), so...
Long-term residential care (LTRC) should be a safe place to work and to live, but in reality, it can be a site of violent situations for older people and staff. In this presentation, we draw on critical geographies, aging, and violence research to analyze how staff manage and control the risk of violence in LTRC. Specifically, we explore the role of space as an instrument of control in places...
Although the expansion of Medicaid has improved adequate and timely access to prenatal care throughout the United States, spatial and sociodemographic inequities in care access persist. This study examines whether initiation and adequacy of prenatal care were impacted by the privatization of Medicaid in Iowa under Managed Care Organizations (MCOs), especially amongst pregnant people residing...
High rates of intervention in birth is a significant health issue. In New Zealand, a primary birthing centre is a site for assessment, labour/birth and post-natal care close to home. These centres are midwife-led, supporting normal birth in an environment free from intervention that encourages active labour. Yet less than ten percent of NZ women birth in a primary birthing centre. We consider,...
Background: Diet is an important risk factor for cardiovascular disease and shows well-established socioeconomic patterning among adults. However, less clear is how socioeconomic inequalities in diet develop across the life course. This study assessed the associations of early adulthood socioeconomic trajectories (SETs) with adult diet quality, accounting for childhood and adulthood...
Globally, the spread of communicable diseases is a major concern, and as such, their eradication is one of the targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Although the spread of infectious diseases is socially and economically driven, their spatial dynamics is conducive to the use of geospatial tools such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), remote sensing, web mapping among...
Childhood violence is a global human rights and public health issue with numerous short- and long-term repercussions for health and wellbeing. Yet, globally, one billion children experience some form of physical, sexual, or emotional violence each year. Despite international attention and policy interest in preventing childhood violence, gaps remain with respect to definitions of violence in...
Anthrax is reported globally with varying disease intensity and seasonality among countries. Livestock anthrax vaccination protects vaccinated animals and subsequently prevents the disease in humans who have close contact with the livestock. In Vietnam, anthrax epidemiology and ecology remain understudied. We used historical data of human and livestock anthrax from 2004-2021 in Lai Chau...
There are persistent racial disparities in a wide range of health outcomes in the United States. Biological aging has been hypothesized to underlie these disparities, with some evidence that racial minorities have faster biological aging than their White counterparts. Studies have attributed racial disparities in biological aging to differences in individual- and familial-level socioeconomic...
Acute respiratory infections (ARI) persist as a significant threat, contributing to 15% of under-five deaths globally, with Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) bearing a disproportionate burden. Climate change compounds this challenge, exerting profound effects on vulnerable populations, particularly children. With escalating frequency of extreme weather events like wildfires, floods, and heat waves,...
Background: With growing urban populations, inclusive and accessible urban spaces become increasingly important, particularly for disability affected persons. At the same time, smart cities and related digital applications provide emerging opportunities for urban health advances. However, the extent to which smart city applications consider or even fulfill the needs of individuals with...
Traditional GIS was critiqued for its reductionist approach, leading to the emergence of Public Participation Geographic Information Science (PPGIS) in the mid-1990s. PPGIS marked a shift towards inclusivity and empowerment. Along with related approaches or methodology such as Participatory GIS (PGIS), community mapping and Critical GIS, it has been used in human geography to incorporate...
To be designated an age-friendly city by the World Health Organization (WHO), a specific set of criteria need to be met. Using the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS), the health and well-being of older people who live in a sample of large cities, which have been designated as age-friendly (AFCs) by the WHO are compared to older people who live in a sample of large cities (AFC-Ns), which...
Several mosquitoes of medical importance are known to be adept at exploiting human habitat, and adapting to urban environments to breed, feed, and transmit pathogens that affect humans. Historically, Aedes aegypti spread from the old to new world, and rapidly became a primary vector in the Americas, for viruses such as yellow fever, dengue, and more recently, chikungunya and Zika. *Aedes...
The conventional approach to understanding the health effects of drinking water in the United States is based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s National Primary Drinking Water Regulations (NPDWR), established under the Safe Drinking Water Act of 1974. The NPDWR, except for the recent passage of the Final PFAS NPDWR, associates single contaminant exposure with a potential health outcome....
