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PubMed1993

Epidemiological transition and geographical discontinuities: the case of cardiovascular mortality in French Polynesia.

The need to maintain the unity of geography justifies the use of every possible approach to the study of spatial discontinuities. The geography of health can be enriched by studying and applying routine methods of regional geography. To achieve this aim, the use of epidemiological transition theory, involving its transposition from the domain of time to space, is proposed. This requires careful analysis of sources of data not commonly used in geography and emphasizes links between health, environment and development. French Polynesia constitutes a prime study area for such an approach, especially because of its multiple contrasts in geographic scale and levels of development between the different archipelagoes and even within individual islands. To demonstrate the utility of this approach, cardiovascular mortality is studied at different geographic scales. Results are displayed as health spatiograms which show the discontinuities of human geography in French Polynesia at different scales. The results appear to constitute synthetic indicators of socio-spatial disparities and permit the geography of health to contribute not only to the measurement of regional health conditions but also to the matters of global human geography.

Cardiovascular Diseases↗

PubMedDate not supplied

[The spatial dimension in health studies: a historical trajectory].

Focusing on concepts taken from critical geography, this article re-examines the spatial notions that were incorporated by the public health field between the late eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. Based on a review and systematization of intellectual production within the field of medical geography, this time span is broken into periods. We begin with a presentation of Finke's work (1792) and then move on to analyze the nineteenth century, when geography and medicine became scientific disciplines. The concept of space as a physical environment, with human action abstracted out, took hold within geography, while the biological-individual paradigm prevailed within the field of medicine. The text discusses the implications of the public health field's decision to embrace the geographic notions of determinism, type of life, and human ecology, and describes the contributions of Max Sorré and Pavlovsky. It also looks at the International Geographical Union's 1952 creation of a Commission on the Medical Geography of Health and illness and analyzes the emergence and coalescence of the 'new geography'.

Geography↗

PubMed2004

Franz Boas, geographer, and the problem of disciplinary identity.

This paper examines Franz Boas as an aspiring professional geographer during the 1880s: his Baffin Land research, his publications, his participation in geography organizations, and his struggle to attain a university appointment in geography. Frustrated by a seeming lack of opportunity for advancement in Germany, Boas explored career opportunities as a geographer in America and launched a series of unsuccessful but meaningful attempts to dominate the intellectual direction of American geography. Finally, the article reviews the circumstances surrounding Boas's appointment as an anthropologist at Clark University in 1889. Through examining Boas's own words and actions, the paper demonstrates that his professional identification with geography was lengthier and stronger than earlier accounts have suggested. It also critiques the myth of a Baffin Land "conversion" to anthropology, and delineates the circumstances of his shift from German human geography to his Americanist recasting of anthropology after 1889.

Anthropology↗

PubMed1993

A medical geographical anniversary.

It is now 200 years since L. L. Finke wrote his treatise on a global medical geography, Versuch einer allgemeinen medicinisch-praktischen Geographie. It was both the most extensive book in substantive content, and the most detailed in conceptual discussion on medical geography written to that point. Although it is one of the foundation pieces of medical geography, modern day practitioners seldom refer to Finke's work. There are two main reasons for this: with the exception of two passages, the work has never been translated from the original German, and many contemporary medical geographers believe that the field only developed in the mid-twentieth century. This paper's purpose is to demonstrate that this last point is unfounded and that recognition of Finke's seminal contribution is long over-due. On the 200th anniversary of the publication of An Attempt at a General Medical-Practical Geography Finke's great achievement is honoured.

Geography↗

PubMed2002

Life and death of the people of London: a historical GIS of Charles Booth's inquiry.

Social reformer Charles Booth undertook a massive survey into the social and economic conditions of the people of London at the end of the 19th century. An important innovation of his Inquiry was the construction of large, detailed maps displaying social class of inner London on a street-by-street basis. These provide a detailed and vivid picture of the geography of poverty and affluence at this time. These maps have been digitised, georeferenced and linked to contemporary ward boundaries allowing Booth's measurement of social class to be matched to the measurement of social class in the 1991 census of population and standardised mortality ratios derived for all causes of death in the survey area between 1991 and 1995. The social class data were used to derive an index of relative poverty for both time periods and a comparison of the geographies of relative poverty and their relationship with contemporary mortality was made. Although the overall standard of living had increased, the geography of poverty at the end of the 19th century was very similar to that at the end of the 20th century. Moreover, the geography of all causes of death for people over the age of 65 was more strongly related to the geography of poverty in the late 19th century than contemporary patterns of poverty. This relationship was also true for mortality for specific diseases that are related to deprivation in early life. The paper concludes that the spatial patterns of poverty in inner London are extremely robust and a century of change has failed to disrupt it.

Cause of Death↗

PubMed1987

A classification of European skulls from three time periods.

We analyze the taxonomic structure of European populations at three time periods, the Early Middle Ages, the Late Middle Ages and the Recent Period. The data consist of sample means for 10 cranial variables based on 137, 108, and 183 samples for the three periods. Clustering by standard numerical taxonomic procedures reveals that the data are represented only poorly as hierarchic classifications. The clusters form significant and moderately strong associations with an arrangement of the samples by regions (geography) and by language family. Whereas during the early period, language family showed a stronger association with clusters based on cranial morphology, in the recent populations these clusters correspond better with geography than with language. Ordinations of these populations by means of nonmetric multidimensional scaling shows the continuity of the taxonomic structure at all three periods. Only a few populations are outliers. The relations between phenetic distances (cranial morphology), geography, and language are examined by means of multiple Mantel tests. At all three periods geography is correlated somewhat more strongly with phenetics than is language affiliation, but the correlation with the latter increases with time. When the data are pooled over the three periods, the populations tend to group by language affiliation more than they do by period. Ordination of the pooled data reveals language patterns rather than patterns due to period, showing strong shifts in cranial measurements through time. These analyses show that while there is no clear-cut taxonomic structure in European populations that would justify the traditional classifications based on the crania, there are significant and important associations with both language affiliation, geography, and time period, in this order. These patterns are likely to have become established through the migration and subsequent expansion of populations into their areas of occupation during the time interval studied rather than by geographic differentiation in situ.

Cephalometry↗

PubMed1988

Genetic, geographic, and linguistic distances in Europe.

Genetic and taxonomic distances were computed for 3466 samples of human populations in Europe based on 97 allele frequencies and 10 cranial variables. Since the actual samples employed differed among the genetic systems studied, the genetic distances were computed separately for each system, as were matrices of geographic distances and of linguistic distances based on membership in the same language family or phylum. Significant matrix correlations between genetics and geography were found for the majority of systems; somewhat less frequent are significant correlations between genetics and language. The effects of the two factors can be separated by means of partial matrix correlations. These show significant values for both genetics and geography, language kept constant, and genetics and language, geography kept constant, with a tendency for the former to be higher. These findings demonstrate that speakers of different language families in Europe differ genetically and that this difference remains even after geographic differentiation is allowed for. The greater effect of geography than of language may be due to the several factors that bring about spatial differentiation in human populations.

Europe↗

PubMed2002

Genetic structure of the Ards Peninsula, Northern Ireland: evidence from civil registers of marriage 1840-1911.

This paper uses marital migration data transcribed from the Civil Registers of Marriage 1840-1911 to estimate kinship from migration matrices and isonymy in the Ards Peninsula, Northern Ireland. The distribution of religious denominations (Presbyterian, Episcopalian, and Roman Catholic) varies systematically throughout the region, with up to 77% Roman Catholic in the south and 81% Presbyterian in the north. Portavogie, a fishing village on the east coast, is exclusively Protestant, with a population 93% Presbyterian. Comparison of migration and isonymy with geographical distance by multidimensional scaling and the MATFIT procedure show Portavogie to be an outlier, more distantly related to other areas than its geographical position would predict. We suggest that this discrepancy is due to settlement history and occupational and religious isolation. Mantel tests show that marital migration is significantly related to geographical distance (rMG = 0.4257), as is the distribution of religious denominations (rRG = 0.5548) through settlement history. Migration is dependent on religion (rMR = 0.3674), and isonymy is dependent on migration (rIM= 0.2531) but not on geography or religion. With Portavogie omitted from the analysis, the dependence of migration on geography and on religion increases (rMG = 0.5583, rMR = 0.5646), as does the correlation between religion and geography (rRG = 0.7213). The dependence of isonymy on migration increases (rIM = 0.5103), and significant correlations between isonymy and religion (rIR = 0.4135) and isonymy and geography (rIG = 0.4660) appear. We argue that a full explanation of population structure requires geographical distance, settlement history, and the influence of religion and occupation to be taken into account.

Christianity↗

PubMed2005

[A process and the prospects for the medical geographic study].

Medical geography is an edge subject crossing many other subjects. It has lately become the focus of attention for the continuously worsening of the living surroundings (earth environment) of the human beings and a series of threats it imposes on human health. This text consists of a comprehensive description of the history of medical geography, a detailed introduction of the research work done in China. What's more, we put forward the idea that disease geography and health geography will become the hotspot in recent study in our country.

Animals↗

PubMed2005

Space, place, and the evidence base: Part II--Rereading nursing environment through geographical research.

This, the second and final article in the short health geography series, articulates how, moving beyond the models and assumptions associated with the metaparadigm of Nursing Environment, as a focused subdisciplinary approach, health geography might provide unique insights into nursing. A case study of a fictional yet somewhat typical children's hospital is presented and demonstrates some wide-ranging geographical issues and research questions (and hence potential geographical data) pertaining to nursing and the allied health professions. Indeed, this broad-brush approach is purposeful to make as many connections as possible to readers with varied theoretical, methodological, empirical, and practice expertise. In addition to the case study, to indicate further how geographical inquiry might locate quite comfortably in nursing research, the article also makes some initial and tentative connections between geography and an established nursing framework for the uptake of research evidence for practice. Although it is acknowledged that geographical inquiry should certainly never have the first call on researching the relationships between nurses and their environments, it is argued that its conceptual focus on space and place provides dedicated and detailed attention and a sound basis for a reformed, "spatialized" route to a more comprehensive understanding. Moreover, it is argued that it also demonstrates great versatility in terms of the scales and the subject matter with which it might engage. Some important issues certainly remain with respect to what might be the correct form of engagement between geographical and nursing research, but arguably, as a reformed disciplinary approach, health geography has the potential to provide a wealth of focused evidence for nursing practice.

Child↗

PubMed2005

Everyday health histories and the making of place: the case of an English coastal town.

During recent years, health geography has focused increasingly on how people's experiences of health and places are interrelated. This has included historical research on a variety of well-known places and remarkable events. In contrast, relatively little attention has been paid to how health and health care can be influential historically to the development, image and identity of 'everyday' and ordinary places. We focus on the case of a small town in Southern England to demonstrate the long and diverse historical connections that exist between health and such places. Using both historical documents and local literature, the paper reviews early invasions and incursions, epidemics of infectious disease, the development of a therapeutic seaside resort, the impacts of the Second World War, and more recent social and economic developments associated with an ageing population. Complex and diverse health-related histories are shown to be interwoven with local and extra-local histories including those of national or international significance. We argue that health histories can be integral to shaping the past and present of places and our broader understandings and interpretations of them. From a disciplinary perspective, we contend that by adopting theoretical perspectives from cultural geography, an enhanced historical geography of health could disentangle these historical strands, tell these important stories and put everyday health histories in their place.

Community Health Services↗

PubMed2005

Contrasting patterns of Y chromosome and mtDNA variation in Africa: evidence for sex-biased demographic processes.

To investigate associations between genetic, linguistic, and geographic variation in Africa, we type 50 Y chromosome SNPs in 1122 individuals from 40 populations representing African geographic and linguistic diversity. We compare these patterns of variation with those that emerge from a similar analysis of published mtDNA HVS1 sequences from 1918 individuals from 39 African populations. For the Y chromosome, Mantel tests reveal a strong partial correlation between genetic and linguistic distances (r=0.33, P=0.001) and no correlation between genetic and geographic distances (r=-0.08, P>0.10). In contrast, mtDNA variation is weakly correlated with both language (r=0.16, P=0.046) and geography (r=0.17, P=0.035). AMOVA indicates that the amount of paternal among-group variation is much higher when populations are grouped by linguistics (Phi(CT)=0.21) than by geography (Phi(CT)=0.06). Levels of maternal genetic among-group variation are low for both linguistics and geography (Phi(CT)=0.03 and 0.04, respectively). When Bantu speakers are removed from these analyses, the correlation with linguistic variation disappears for the Y chromosome and strengthens for mtDNA. These data suggest that patterns of differentiation and gene flow in Africa have differed for men and women in the recent evolutionary past. We infer that sex-biased rates of admixture and/or language borrowing between expanding Bantu farmers and local hunter-gatherers played an important role in influencing patterns of genetic variation during the spread of African agriculture in the last 4000 years.

Africa↗

PubMed1992

Dermatoglyphic variation among Finno-Ugric speaking populations: methodological alternatives.

Utilization of dermatoglyphics for population studies is apparently increasing, but methods vary widely among investigators. We investigate how different types of dermatoglyphic data can affect estimates of biological distance among Finno-Ugric speaking populations. Dermatoglyphic distances were calculated using the following categories of traits: 1) Finger ridge-counts (radial and ulnar count for each digit), 2) finger ridge-counts (largest count for each digit), 3) finger pattern types, 4) palm ridge-counts, 5) palm patterns, and 6) main-line terminations. In addition, we compare our distances with those of Heet, which rely heavily on summary characters. Distances are evaluated by comparing them to each other and to language and geographic distances. There is considerable variation in the pattern of relationships resulting from the different variable sets. Finger variables, whether ridge-counts or pattern classifications, agree well with each other. Palm patterns, main-lines, and finger variables show moderate agreement with each other, while palm ridge-counts agree poorly with all variable sets except main-lines. Heet's distances agree poorly with all other dermatoglyphic distances. Finger patterns and main-lines are most closely related to language distances, after controlling for geography, while correlations with geography generally disappear after controlling for language. Heet's distances have weak associations with language and geography. Finger variables and palm main-lines yield results which agree best with historical relationships among Finno-Ugric populations. Our results make it very clear that utilization of dermatoglyphics in population studies requires careful consideration of methods, and that summary measures of quantitative or qualitative data should be used with caution.

Analysis of Variance↗

PubMed1998

Accessing Prior Knowledge to Remember Text: A Comparison of Advance Organizers and Maps

Two theories, schema and dual coding, and the conjoint retention model were contrasted to explain the role of geographic familiarity and prior knowledge in map-passage retention. One hundred, eighty-six college students listened to a passage taking place in either a familiar or unfamiliar geographic domain and viewed either a map or no map of either of the two geographic areas. One-third of each group received either a general or specific advance organizer of the passage topic, or no organizer at all. Results revealed that maps function to bridge what learners already know about an area and what they need to remember from a passage. However, prior knowledge of geography is activated by the geographic propositions contained in a passage, with or without a map. Thus, maps serve a mnemonic function of imagery, but learners' prior knowledge of the geography of the map's space mediates the value of the map. Learners are able to generate an image of the map themselves if there are locational markers in the passage, and the geography of those markers are familiar. Copyright 1998 Academic Press.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2000

Radical prostatectomy: geographic and demographic variation.

OBJECTIVES: Previous reports have documented a geographic variation in the use of radical prostatectomy. We examined whether this phenomenon can be explained by factors other than geography alone. METHODS: This study was based on the data from nine geographic regions of the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program for the years 1983 through 1994. Patients with localized or regional prostate cancer were included in the analysis. Logistic regression analysis was used to investigate the influence of geographic and demographic factors on the use of radical prostatectomy. The squared multiple correlation coefficient R(2) was used to measure the proportion of variation in the selection of radical prostatectomy explained by each factor of interest. RESULTS: As previously reported, the use of radical prostatectomy was significantly associated with geographic location; the degree of geographic variation varied as a function of age and was most dramatic in the youngest (younger than 45 years) and the oldest (75 years or older) groups. Overall, however, geography explained less than 2% of the total variation in the use of radical prostatectomy. Age was the most important factor that influenced the use of radical prostatectomy. CONCLUSIONS: Geography explains only a small proportion of the variation in the use of radical prostatectomy. In fact, of the factors examined, only age appeared to meaningfully explain the variation in the use of radical prostatectomy. Overall, our ability to explain the variation in the use of radical prostatectomy remains meager, and new factors must be identified if we are to better understand how patients and physicians make clinical decisions.

Adult↗

PubMed2005

Assimilation and differences between the settlement patterns of individual immigrants and immigrant households.

Analyses of immigrant settlement patterns typically rely on counts of foreign-born individuals by neighborhood, metropolitan area, state, or region. As an alternative, this study classifies immigrants and their descendents into household types to shift attention from individuals to relationships between individuals. The study uses pooled current population survey data to identify seven household types, six of which have various degrees of immigrant or second-generation presence. The research compares distributions of first- and second-generation immigrants with different types of households that include first- and second-generation immigrants. Our analysis shows that the geography of immigration based on households differs considerably from geographies based on individuals. The spatial distribution and concentration of the foreign-stock population provides one picture of immigrant geographies, whereas the patterns of concentration by several different household types opens up the chance to tell other stories. More pointedly, we emphasize that the unit of analysis shapes assimilation research results and implies that this analytical choice cannot be thought of as independent from the politics of immigration.

Acculturation↗

PubMed2025

A Systematic Review of Spatial Epidemiological Modeling Approaches Applied During the COVID-19 Pandemic.

BACKGROUND: A wide range of epidemiological modeling approaches have been applied to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, which presents an opportunity to assess common approaches applied to specific research questions. Spatial models interrogate how heterogeneities and host movement dynamics influence local and regional patterns of disease, issues that were of great interest for understanding and controlling SARS-CoV-2. OBJECTIVE: Here we present a systematic review of spatial epidemiological modeling approaches of SARS-CoV-2. We describe common themes and highlight unique strategies, providing a foundation for researchers to devise spatial models most appropriate for future pathogens and epidemics. Our review also categorizes the research questions that were addressed with spatial models, highlights parameter estimation techniques, and describes the cyber infrastructure used for model development. METHODS: We conducted a systematic review using Web of Science and a standardized set of keywords, followed by thorough examination of abstracts and full texts to determine which studies met our inclusion criteria. To guide our description and comparisons of models, we developed a Geography, Population, Movement (GPM) framework that conceptualizes the interactions between three distinct subcomponents of any spatial model. The geographic model represents the physical arena in which the model is implemented, the intra-population model describes the transmission and disease processes that occur within distinct spatial units of the geography, and the movement model describes the algorithms that dictate how hosts move among spatial units within the geography. RESULTS: The search identified a total of 193 articles, of which 109 were included in our review. The most abundant intra-population modeling methods were agent-based (47.7%) and compartmental modeling (29.4%) approaches. Movement models ranged in complexity, with the most complex models implementing commuter movement among many points of interest in the geographic arena, which were sometimes parameterized by fine-scale mobility data. Geographic models ranged from describing microcosms, such as single classrooms, all the way up to multi-country models. Of the 63.3% of models studies that specified the programming language used, we detected ten different languages, with Matlab and Python being the most frequent, although only 30.6% of studies provided open-access code for their models. We also described eight specialized software systems that were used to construct agent-based or compartment models of COVID-19. CONCLUSIONS: Our review identified and characterized a variety of spatial modeling strategies and software that were usefully employed to address many relevant epidemiological questions for COVID-19. Future research is needed to quantitatively assess which modeling approaches are most appropriate in specific situations, to answer specific questions, or to apply to certain disease systems. Moreover, future cyberinfrastructure could help to modularize and standardize modeling approaches, which would increase transparency and reproducibility, and which would facilitate a detailed examination of which model attributes relate to model performance in a variety of contexts.

COVID-19↗

PubMed1993

The geographic distribution of multiple sclerosis: a review.

The decisive conclusions to be drawn from the geography and prevalence of MS are: (1) a north-south (as well as west-east in the United States) gradient exists independent from genetic/racial factors; (2) major differences in prevalence occur in the absence of difference in latitude; (3) individuals from the same ethnic derivation have either the similar prevalence or have very different prevalence rates in widely separated geographical areas, and (4) specific resistance isolates are shown to exist regardless of latitude. Existing prevalence information leads to the almost inescapable conclusion that the geography of MS cannot be explained by any single known environmental or genetic factor(s) in isolation. A combination of a heterogeneous distribution of both genetic and environmental factors appears to be required to explain the available data on MS and geography.

Causality↗