Search

The overuse of cesarean sections (C-sections) in the United States is a contested issue. The rate of C-section births in 2015 at 32 percent was over double the World Health Organization recommendation of 10 to 15 percent. We employed spatial statistical methods and data visualization techniques to assess the temporal and spatial trends in C-section rates by county across the United States. Although the national rate of C-section remained stable at the beginning and end of this study period, an increase in rates from 1997 to 2009 was reflected simultaneously in national, state, and individual county rates. Local indicators of spatial dependence did not show spatial clustering as being connected to, or driving, the change, yet the visualization methods used here show details on individual county deviance from local temporal trends. By highlighting counties that do not follow the trends of their neighbors, we identify exceptional locations that could help further the study of the determinants of changing C-section rates in the United States. Key Words: cesarean sections, exploratory spatial data analysis, medical geography, spatial statistics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A spatial variant of the basic reproduction number ( R0), here defined as the number of subsequent deaths attributed to an initial mortality, can be used to identify geographic variation within an epidemic. A spatial R0 was calculated at the neighborhood level, here defined by a 50-m buffer surrounding an index case, for mortality data from the 1878 yellow fever epidemic of New Orleans. The highest number of secondary mortalities linked to a neighborhood index case was twelve, with a further eighty-seven extrapolated morbidity cases. Results also highlight the importance of multideath residences and cultural contacts in neighborhood-level disease spread. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dengue is an emerging disease, and the distribution of the mosquito vector is partially mediated by environmental conditions. In this article, a new conceptual model is suggested that emphasizes the importance of including environmental variability in mosquito modeling studies. In an applied sense, mosquito habitat maps are developed for Hawaii using a GIS overlay of mosquito survival thresholds of temperature, precipitation, and stream/wetland location. Populated areas represent locations with the potential for an outbreak. The maps are adjustable based on expert knowledge input, and efforts to prevent or control outbreaks can be concentrated in those zones delineated by this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the use of qualitative research methods to assess the medical geography of a community-based approach of a heart care program in Ontario. Effectiveness of health promotion campaigns in the province; Analysis of key informant interviews of the program's participants and organizers; Merging of local perspectives and dynamics of intra-community relations.

Explains the advantages of qualitative medical research approaches in exploring aspects of problems in medical geography. Improvement of research focus on place and health; Introduction of the concept of pragmatism as a philosophical basis for conducting medical research work; Objective of a philosophically grounded qualitative health geography.

Discusses the contribution of qualitative research to the reinvention of medical geography. Exploration of the link between social theory and the deconstruction of central categories organizing medical orientation; Potential of qualitative research for reconceptualizing key issues framing investigation of relationships between place, people and health.

Focuses on the reforms on the social theory and medical geography as proposed by Robin Kearns. Reconsidering the body as a site of struggle; Use of socioecological approach to disease; Social movements and well-being.

Discusses the need to resituate medical geography within social geography. Complex relationships between disease and environment; Social construction of health status; Biomedical model and disease ecology; Global health concerns.

Discusses the failure of Robin Kearns to reform medical geography. Neglect of disease ecology; Focus on biomedical model; Elements of primary health care; Link of medical geography to postmodernism.

The nature and sources of early American understanding of an important form of human-induced climatic change, the urban heat island effect, are considered. Recognition and explanation of the phenomenon occurred both earlier and more widely than is usually supposed. Interest stemmed not only from concerns that remain significant today, but from other that have been discarded, notably anticontagionist theories of the causation of disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medical geography frequently contributes to public health, but rarely are medical geographic concepts applied in clinical settings. This article describes the application of medical geographic concepts to an academic travel and tropical medicine clinical services at University Hospital in Seattle, and reviews the role of a medical geographer in this particular clinical setting. Applied concepts of medical geography improve the quality of patient care for overseas travelers and recent immigrants to the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Apart from the tragic certainty of death which accompanies AIDS everywhere, the means of its transmission, the spatial patterns of its diffusion, and the groups at highest risk of infection vary considerably among world regions. This paper reviews the disease and its transmission, then proposes three models of AIDS diffusion to assess the implications of the epidemic on various regions. AIDS North, of North America and western Europe, is urban based and primarily confined to homosexuals and l V drug abusers. AIDS South, in central Africa and the Caribbean, is spreading from cities into rural regions and affects primarily heterosexuals. The third, an AIDS North/South hybrid, is postulated as a model of diffusion of the disease in other Third World regions. The final section addresses the potential contribution of geographic research to policy-makers in attempting to cope with the diffusion of AIDS and m curbing the epidemic's advance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents Robin Kearns' reply to a commentary regarding his article `Place and Health: Toward a Reformed Medical Geography,' published in the 1993 issue of the periodical `The Professional Geographer.' Commentator Bimal K. Paul's experience as a medical geographer in developing country contexts; Reformed medical geography's limit to home and community concerns; Omission of detailed reference to disease ecology.

Comments on the article `Place and Health: Toward a Reformed Medical Geography,' by Robin A. Kearns published in the 1993 issue of the periodical `The Professional Geographer.' Contribution of medical geography to the relationship between society and health care; Kearns' use of the concept of place and the contents of post-medical geography; Provision of services in a hierarchical order.

Highlights the Third International Symposium in Medical Geography held August 7 to 11, 1988, hosted by the Department of Geography, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario. History of the symposium; Number of papers presented at Kingston; Overview of a typical day's agenda at Kingston.