Placing Health: Neighbourhood Renewal, Health Improvement and Complexity

By Tim Blackman. . Published by The Policy Press, Bristol, 2006, pp 264, £21.99 (paperback). ISBN 101861346107. In an effort to understand the multiple determinants of health and devise strategies for health improvement, neighbourhoods have become a burgeoning area of inquiry and intervention. While neighbourhood quality is posited to have a measurable impact on the health of its inhabitants, much work is needed to better define neighbourhoods, the pathways by which they influence health and how and where to intervene to improve them and, consequently, the health of their inhabitants. Blackman delves in to these issues in Placing Health: Neighbourhood Renewal, Health Improvement and Complexity . Focusing primarily on the United Kingdom, Blackman provides a review of the evidence on the place-health association. He …