Medical Geography Research Articles

Medical geographical zoning in part of Uzbekistan – A regional synthesis

This study delves into the nuanced realm of medical geography, focusing on the intricate interplay between geographical factors and public health outcomes in the Samarkand and Navoi regions of Uzbekistan. Over the decades, the field of medical geography has evolved, embracing a holistic perspective that integrates ecological, socioeconomic, and accessibility elements to elucidate the complex dynamics of disease distribution and healthcare provision. Utilizing a comprehensive methodology, this research employs a combination of GIS tools, statistical analysis, and expert input to delineate medical geographical zones within the study area. By synthesizing data from diverse sources including administrative records, environmental assessments, and demographic surveys, the study constructs a detailed picture of the region's health landscape. The analysis revealed five primary medical geographical zones and a sub-zone, each characterized by distinct natural features, economic activities, and health challenges. From the bustling urban centers of Samarkand and Navoi to the remote desert expanses of Uzguduk - Tomdi North, each zone presents unique opportunities and obstacles for healthcare delivery and environmental management. Key findings highlight the disproportionate distribution of healthcare resources, with densely populated areas in the southern part of the study area benefitting from greater accessibility to medical facilities compared to remote rural regions. Moreover, environmental factors such as air pollution, water contamination, and climatic variability emerge as significant determinants of public health, exacerbating respiratory ailments, cardiovascular diseases, and other health conditions. The study underscores the importance of spatial analysis and interdisciplinary collaboration in addressing complex health issues within diverse geographical landscapes. By mapping medical geographical zones and understanding their specific health concerns, policymakers and healthcare professionals can develop targeted interventions to improve healthcare access, mitigate environmental hazards, and promote community well-being. In conclusion, this research contributes valuable insights to the field of medical geography, shedding light on the multifaceted interactions between geography, environment, and health in the Samarkand and Navoi regions of Uzbekistan. Moving forward, further research and collaborative efforts are needed to address the underlying determinants of health disparities and foster sustainable development in the region.

Geospatial Representations of COVID-19: Evidential Relevance of Medical Geography for Health and Wellness

The significant role of geospatial techniques in the evaluation of COVID-19 dynamics in the last year is reviewed in this work. The application of geographical concepts, quantitative techniques and geographical methods is not a new approach but a well-established branch of geography called medical geography. This contribution presents how implementation of geospatial representation and geographical analysis has been used to understand the spread and patterns of COVID-19. It emphasises the need for the relevance of this branch of geography in our society and argues for the rejuvenation or introduction of medical geography in countries or institutions where the discipline is lacking. The principles and concepts of medical geography have served the medical field and society well during this pandemic. While there may have been limited interest among researchers and academia in geography on this area of specialisation, recent attention given to its principles in addressing the issue of COVID-19 should serve as strong motivation to revitalise this sub-field where needed. Development of medical and/or health geography has the potential to contribute to a healthy society and nation.

The Fantasy of Anorexia: Historical Entanglements of Evolutionary Thought, Food Restriction, and Curative Imaginaries

There has been a recent increase in literature that critically engages how anorexic people experience their symptoms and challenges the current approaches to recovery in treatment centers. Yet, this work does not grapple with transnational scientific histories of the medicalized construction of eating disorders that affect who is able to be legible as eating disordered. Doing so (re)naturalizes anorexia as a disease that predominantly affects white girls and women, reinforcing erasures of those not easily interpellated into anorexic subjective positions. I address this gap through a disability studies and queer science studies grounding. I analyze early French writings on anorexia’s emergent forms, US dietetics in the burgeoning domestic science movement, and the differential pathologization of body size in the context of evolutionary thinking on capacity, debility, and nervousness. In doing so, I argue that anorexia nervosa emerges through racist sciences that spread and transformed across US-Euro imperial medical geographies, effectively functioning as a curative approach to the contradictions between white supremacist securitization of whiteness and its reproductive futurities. This paper highlights implications for present eating disorder diagnostic norms, re-situating them in a broader geohistorical context during which hierarchies of ability and personhood were organized through race, gender, and capacity.

Maternal Mortality and its Relationship to Age in North Darfur in 2022 A study in medical Geography

Maternal Mortality and its Relationship to Age in North Darfur in 2022 A study in medical Geography

Climate Change and its Impact on Human Health: A Medical Geography Perspective

This research discusses the impact of climate change on human health using a medical geography approach. Climate change affects health through extreme heatwaves, changing patterns of infectious disease spread and intensification of natural disasters. A medical geography perspective provides insight into how geographical factors such as climate, topography and population distribution affect vulnerability to these impacts. The importance of understanding medical geography in meeting these challenges and the need for global cooperation to address the impacts of climate change on human health are emphasized. The article underscores the need for appropriate mitigation measures to protect future human health in the face of increasingly apparent climate change.

The history of louse-borne typhus and geomedizine

The experience of World War I made popular the concept of medical geography (geomedicine in English, geomedizine in German), which became part of Nazism's philosophy of national welfare, safety, and solidarity. The Nazis used it to create propaganda to show some groups as rats, vermin, and Untermenschen (subhumans). In this way, more than 10 million people were killed under the Nazi regime: 6 million Jews, plus more than 5 million Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, and other individuals who were not part of the German theory of “master race.” The Germans’ fear of typhus that spread in the Wehrmacht was so immense that during the occupation, Polish doctors used this phobia to organize a resistance movement. Contemporarily, the scope of geographic medicine encompasses the following research areas: spatial differentiation of disease incidents and the process of disease diffusion, geographic inequalities in the population's health level, and morbidity determinants among the inhabitants of developing countries. In the first half of the 19th century, it played an essential role in the activities aimed against epidemics of infectious diseases, including louse-borne typhus (epidemic typhus), cholera, and typhoid, linking these diseases to cultural determinants. Under the influence of this idea, the concept of doctor-hygienist emerged, and social medicine began to evolve.

Dynamics of Medical Geography Development in Indonesia: Exploring the Interaction between Geographical Factors and Public Health

Understanding the interaction between geographical factors and public health has become an increasingly important subject of research in medicine and global health. By utilizing available geospatial data, we can more deeply understand health patterns and health risks across Indonesia. Therefore, the background of this study underscores the urgency of research in the dynamic development of medical geography in Indonesia. This research uses a descriptive qualitative approach. The type of research used is a literature study which is research that has been done before by collecting books, journals, magazines, and scientific papers that are interrelated with the research problems and objectives. Literature study is a data collection technique carried out by conducting a study of books or literature related to the problem being solved (Roller, 2019). The literature study database used is by searching on Google Scholar, Scopus, and Google Book. The search was conducted using keywords related to the development of medical geography in Indonesia and case studies of geographic information system utilization in the health sector. The results of this study provide a deeper understanding of how medical geography in Indonesia has evolved over time and has an important role in shaping a holistic view of public health. As a vast and diverse archipelago, the application of medical geography principles in Indonesia can make a significant contribution to improving planning, decision-making, and implementation of more effective and inclusive health programs. Abstrak: Pemahaman tentang interaksi antara faktor geografis dan kesehatan masyarakat telah menjadi subjek penelitian yang semakin penting dalam bidang kedokteran dan kesehatan global. Dengan memanfaatkan data geospasial yang tersedia, kita dapat lebih mendalam memahami pola kesehatan dan risiko kesehatan di seluruh wilayah Indonesia. Oleh karena itu, latar belakang penelitian ini menggarisbawahi urgensi penelitian dalam dinamika perkembangan geografi medis di Indonesia. Penelitian ini menggunakan pendekatan kualitatif deskriptif. Jenis penelitian yang digunakan adalah studi literatur yang merupakan penelitian yang telah dilakukan sebelumnya dengan mengumpulkan buku-buku, jurnal, majalah, dan karya tulis ilmiah yang saling berkaitan dengan masalah dan tujuan penelitian. Studi literatur merupakan teknik pengumpulan data yang dilakukan dengan cara melakukan studi terhadap buku-buku atau literatur yang berhubungan dengan masalah yang sedang dipecahkan (Roller, 2019). Basis data studi literatur yang digunakan adalah dengan melakukan pencarian di Google Scholar, Scopus, dan Google Book. Pencarian dilakukan dengan menggunakan kata kunci yang berkaitan dengan perkembangan geografi medis di Indonesia dan studi kasus pemanfaatan sistem informasi geografis di bidang kesehatan. Hasil penelitian ini memberikan pemahaman yang lebih mendalam tentang bagaimana geografi medis di Indonesia telah berkembang seiring waktu dan memiliki peran penting dalam membentuk pandangan holistik terhadap kesehatan masyarakat. Sebagai negara kepulauan yang luas dan beragam, pengaplikasian prinsip geografi medis di Indonesia dapat memberikan kontribusi yang signifikan dalam meningkatkan perencanaan, pengambilan keputusan, serta pelaksanaan program-program kesehatan yang lebih efektif dan inklusif.

Unpacking Occupational Health Data in the Service Sector: From Bayesian Networking and Spatial Clustering to Policy-Making

The health status of the service sector workforce is a significant unknown in the field of medical geography. While spatial epidemiology has made progress in predicting the relationship between human health and the environment, there are still important challenges that remain unsolved. The main issue lies in the inability to statistically determine and visually represent all spatial concepts, as there is a need to cover a wide range of service activities while also considering the impact of numerous traditional medical variables and emerging risk factors, such as those related to socioeconomic and bioclimatic factors. This study aims to address the needs of health professionals by defining, prioritizing, and visualizing multiple occupational health risk factors that contribute to the well-being of workers. To achieve this, a methodological approach based on the synergy of Bayesian machine learning and geostatistics is proposed. Extensive data from occupational health surveillance tests were collected in Spain, along with socioeconomic and bioclimatic covariates, to assess potential social and climate impacts on health. This integrated approach enabled the identification of relevant patterns related to risk factors. A three-step geostatistical modeling process, including variography, ordinary kriging, and G clustering, was used to generate national distribution maps for various factors such as annual mean temperature, annual rainfall, spine health, limb health, cholesterol, age, and sleep quality. These maps considered four target activities—administration, finances, education, and hospitality. Remarkably, bioclimatic variables were found to contribute approximately 9% to the overall health status of workers.

Medical geography: Topical approaches and methodological intersections

Medical geography is an ancient branch of human geography that has its roots throughout history as ideas and practices. It later developed a scientific methodology that took an applied path by adopting medical data and quantitative analysis to devote its attention towards revealing human health suffering at the spatial level. It has an objective involvement with medicine and a systematic intersection in the contexts of research and study.

IJAGR at the International Medical Symposium Geography 2022 Edinburgh, Scotland

Donald Albert (co-Editor-in-Chief) from Sam Houston State University and Dhitinut Ratnapradipa (Associate Editor) from Creighton University participated in the 19th International Medical Symposium Geography (IMGS) from June 19-June 24, 2022, in Edinburgh, Scotland. The event operated out of the Royal College of Surgeons located in the Old Town of Edinburgh. This historic venue provided an appropriate setting to contemplate patterns of health and disease. Jamie Pearce and Niamh Shortt (University of Edinburgh) were co-Chairs of the IMGS 2022. The authors' poster abstract was entitled, “The International Journal of Applied Geospatial Research: Temporal Metrics and Coverage of Medical Geography, 2010-2021.”

Commentary

This commentary reflects on two observations concerning trends in presenting medical geography studies. These include lack of cartographic rigor, and not defining or recognizing changing definitions of healthy and unhealth foods and ways of eating.

A járványokról történeti, környezeti és földrajzi szempontból

Analysing some of the major pandemics in history (plague, smallpox, cholera, and influenza), this study examines the causes of their outbreak and their effects on human society, as well as on the natural environment. The animal origin of the majority of infectious diseases is considered proven by most specialists. In several cases, persistent weather changes also played a role in the outbreaks of pandemics, causing famines. The development of a society, including crowdedness in cities, the development of trade and transport, and the expansion of human relations have played a decisive role in the spread of pandemics, while wars deepen the consequences of diseases. The spread of pandemics is shown on maps and the first successful medical geography research in history is analysed. Severe pandemics have hindered the development of particular societies, which, in turn, leads to the regeneration of nature. Finally, the lessons that can be learned from the great pandemics in history are discussed, which can provide clues regarding how to prevent and control new epidemics.

Medical Geography: Natural Environment & Health

Medical Geography: Natural Environment & Health

Re-corporealising MRI Data

MRI is a non-invasive biomedical imaging technology that visualizes tissues within the body. Corporeal matter as perceived by MRI straddles definitions of substance, organism, subject, and object. MRI interacts with the body through nuclear magnetic resonance and creates biomedical images using electrodynamics, signal analysis, and mathematics. MRI brings us into contact with the body as a patient, a person, a biological environment, pathology, and as an assemblage of biochemical reactions charted by a medical geography. It reminds us that we contain autonomic organs, tissues, cells, molecules, and that we are atomic, and composed molecularly. In other words, the body acts beyond us. Here, I explore MRI through creative practice, using pan.able to create an embedded and relational assemblage of my practice, and how it interacts with MRI. My point of departure is to identify interfaces in MRI as “places”, sites or moments where separate entities become connected and where a change in force or informational transfer occurs. During an MRI scan, a powerful magnetic field moves across the body-machine interface, interacting with bodily matter on the subatomic level. The interactions of the scanner result in the protons within the subject emitting radio frequency pulses which are detected and transformed into a digital biomedical image using computational processes. Through a practice of “re-corporealisation”, the art practice described in this article explores corporeality and the philosophical concept of the abject as crucial to our subjectivity. This art project examines the MRI process as partly composed of the body-machine and analogue-digital interfaces resulting in artworks that interact with and emerge from MRI. I created sculptures called phantoms using tissue-mimicking materials (TMMs), named after scientific devices of the same name. Phantoms are used in biomedical imaging as stand-ins for human tissue, and used to calibrate, test, and verify scanning protocols. My sculptural phantoms are materials-led objects made to interact at the body-machine interface and be sensed by MRI. They are recognized and treated as semi-figurative body proxies and came to inform my understanding of my personal experience of cancer and medical treatment. I scanned my phantoms at the Francis Crick Institute, London and the Future Technology Centre, Portsmouth, where I was able to explore the potential of an art object as a scientific device and create further parity between them and my medical subjectivity. At the analogue-digital interface, I use weaving (also a body-machine interface) to explore how the signals from the body become biomedical images. I analyze and visually represent the different mathematical properties needed to make an MRI image: frequency, amplitude, phase, sequence, precession, signal-to-noise ratio, real and imaginary numbers. By translating these into images, weave drafts, and weaving them into textural patternings, I create re-corporealised, hand-woven deconstructed reconfigurations of the informational transfers that take place at the analogue-digital interface. The shared lineage of the computer and loom helps me to understand and enact how weaving and computational technologies operate. Part of the process or re-coporealisation was to make MRI processes knowable through my own body and my woven work. MRI makes us aware of different kinds of entanglements: MRI emerges with the body which charts both self and health. Electrons, textiles, signals, TMMs, and movements through the loom are entangled with the phenomenon of corporeal matter, my experience of cancer, and cancer treatment. These entanglements are visualized in my pan.able article through interacting layers, transparencies and opacities, overlapping photographic records of my work, photos of the lab, phantom-making, computer screens, stages of weaving, handwritten notes, sketches, and illustrations. Linking and relinking multiple concepts through patches of transparency helped me to convey how multi-scalar entities and systems in my research and practice are entangled, embodied, and embedded.

Geospatial analysis of patients' social determinants of health for health systems science and disparity research.

Geospatial analysis of patients' social determinants of health for health systems science and disparity research.

First dissertation in medical geography at the Medico-Surgical Academy

Little-known scientific facts related to the circumstances of writing and defending the dissertation for the Medico-Surgical Academy Eduard Blaschke entitled "Medical topography of the Novo-Arkhangelsk port, the main Russian settlement in North America were considered. Medical topographic descriptions of various territories and settlements of the Russian Empire were numerous in the 18th19th centuries, but dissertation studies of this kind are rare. The authors of the article carried out a bibliographic work covering a wide range of reliable sources in order to identify the earliest dissertation research in the field of medical geography. According to updated information, E. Blaschkes work stored in the library of the Kirov Military Medical Academy was the first scientific work in the history of the Medical and Surgical Academy in the field of medical geography, presented as a dissertation for the degree of Doctor of Medicine. The dissertation was written based on E. Blaschkes materials and stay in the Russian colonial possessions in North America as the head doctor of the Novo-Arkhangelsk Hospital. Local living conditions, lifestyle, occupation, and nature of work and leisure of the population were systematically described, and as a result, due to all these reasons, since endemic diseases can be associated not only with climatic causes the endemic specificity of the incidence of the inhabitants of this region, and with a wider range of local territorial factors. E. Blaschkes medical-geographical research was of great scientific and practical importance for its time. It was timely and relevant, but today this work is not known to a wide range of specialists, which, of course, has a significant gap in the knowledge of the history of the formation and development of medical geography, which needs to be replenished. The historical research conducted by the authors of the article allows us to highly appreciate the role of graduates of the Medical and Surgical Academy in healthcare systems organization in the Russian colonial possessions in America: all the chief doctors of the central hospital of the settlements were its graduates. Of particular interest is the experience of E. Blaschke in combating the smallpox epidemic in the Aleutian Islands and the local populations mass vaccination.

Revisiting the ‘Epistemization’ of Overlaying: The computerized mapping of disease project (MOD), 1965–1968

The article discusses the practice of overlaying maps for the study of disease-environment correlations in medical geography, and how it has been expressed as an epistemic practice in the early days of digital geographic information systems (GIS). It focuses on the research project “Computerized Mapping of Disease (MOD)” (1965–1968), where the epistemological promise of overlaying was made explicit and in relation to new technological affordances. I argue that the MOD project points to a dual shift in the meaning of overlaying for correlation inference during its attempted “computerization”: the transformation of overlaying from an implicit practice toward an explicit epistemic resource and toward a conceptual schema for reflecting about the nature of correlations, which effectively promoted the technology of overlaying as a new apparatus of implication. Overall, the article proposes an epistemiologically reflexive take on the history of geomedia practices.

Mapping the Way to Good Health: The Interdisciplinary Challenges of Geographers in Medical Research.

Geography has an important role to play in shaping the direction of medical research. In particular, its tools and theory provide essential understanding to the impacts of place on health behaviors and outcomes. Understanding some of its evolution—particularly into the subfield of medical geography—is therefore useful both for geographers and medical researchers. In this paper, we present some of the debates that geographers have grappled with, the growth of GIS (particularly in the context of medical research), some important methodological considerations that geographers help center, and some recommendations for future work at this nexus. Throughout, we speak from the perspective of geographers who have worked nearly exclusively in the health sciences since obtaining our PhDs.

Processing Large Outliers in Arrays of Observations

The interest in large or extreme outliers in arrays of empirical information is caused by the wishes of users (with whom the author worked): specialists in medical and zoo geography, mining, the application of meteorology in fishing tasks, etc. The following motives are important for these specialists: the substantial significance of large emissions, the fear of errors in the study of large emissions by standard and previously used methods, the speed of information processing and the ease of interpretation of the results obtained. To meet these requirements, interval pattern recognition algorithms and the accompanying auxiliary computational procedures have been developed. These algorithms were designed for specific samples provided by the users (short samples, the presence of rare events in them or difficulties in the construction of interpretation scenarios). They have the common property that the original optimization procedures are built for them or well-known optimization procedures are used. This paper presents a series of results on processing observations by allocating large outliers as in a time series in planar and spatial observations. The algorithms presented in this paper differ in speed and sufficient validity in terms of the specially selected indicators. The proposed algorithms were previously tested on specific measurements and were accompanied by meaningful interpretations. According to the author, this paper is more applied than theoretical. However, to work with the proposed material, it is required to use a more diverse mathematical tool kit than the one that is traditionally used in the listed applications.

Spatial Evaluation of Oral Lichen Planus Patients Referred to Shiraz Dental School, Iran: a Medical Geography Approach.

Oral lichen planus (OLP) is an important inflammatory disease concerning its tendency to malignancy. The etiopathogenesis of this disease is still unknown. Medical geography uses geographic techniques to study factors related to location that cause uneven distribution of disease. This study was conducted to map OLP in patients referred to Shiraz Dental School with medical geography techniques and investigate any possible relationship between the number of dentists and health-centers in different regions of Fars province with the number of referrals. In this cross-sectional study, we evaluated the records of OLP patients referred to Shiraz Dental School from 2007 to 2018. Age, sex, place of residence, occupation, level of education, location of involvement, duration, and cutaneous involvement were recorded. The number of dentists and healthcare centers was obtained from the statistical records of Fars province. A Geographic Information System was used for the assessment of the spatial distribution of OLP. Ordinary least squares (OLS) and geographically weighted regression (GWR) indices were used for evaluating the relationship between the number of dentists and health centers with the number of referrals. From 1006 records, 457 were studied, from which 71% were female (age range of 41-60). The regression coefficient was 0.937 for the number of dentists in each county compared to OLP referrals indicating a strong relationship. The regression coefficient was 0.983 for the number of health-centers. According to GWR analyses in Shiraz neighboring counties like Marvdasht, Sepidan, and Sarvestan, there is a positive relationship between the number of dentists and OLP patients. The results revealed that dentists and health care centers had a good cognition of referring patients with OLP (as a premalignant lesion) for definite diagnosis in Fars counties. But both groups need more education in this matter. Moreover, referrals from settlements near Shiraz were more common because of their easier access.