GEG/ENV 3303 Health Geography: Course Introduction

• GEG/ENV 3303 is Health Geography
• The professors are Dr. Aisha Giwa and Kruti Mehta
• The date is January 6th, 2025

Indigenous Affirmation

• Respect is payed to the Algonquin people, who are the traditional guardians of the land
• Their longstanding relationship with this territory, which remains unceded, is acknowledged
• Respect is payed also to all Indigenous people in this region, from all nations across Canada, who call Ottawa home
• The traditional knowledge keepers, both young and old, are acknowledged
• Honour is payed to courageous leaders: past, present, and future

Outline of the Course

• Introduction will take place
• Learning Outcomes will be defined
• Assessment Strategy will be explained
• Introduction to Health Geography will be presented
• Concept of Health will be discussed
• Geographical Concepts will be covered

House Keeping

• Be respectful of yourselves and shared spaces
• Electronic devices should be on silent or do not disturb
• In-person attendance is not mandatory but must be at the start of the session and remain for its entirety, pending no emergencies
• If you anticipate leaving the class at some point, sit at the periphery of the classroom to avoid disturbance
• Student participation in group discussion is encouraged, by asking questions and making comments

Course Learning Outcomes

• There is an understanding of different social science and biomedical models of health
• There is an understanding of theoretical approaches and methods used in Health Geography
• The roles of social, economic, environmental, health care and other factors are taken into account when determining health
• The changing global context of health needs to be understood
• Patterns and trends in health care delivery are considered
• Factors affecting healthcare access and health outcomes across populations are studied

Required Materials

• All learning materials are provided by the professor on Brightspace weekly lecture folders
• Students do not incur additional costs
• Always refer to the syllabus

Assesment Strategy

• The Research Assignment is a paper, worth 15% and is due February 10, 2025
• The Mid-term Quiz is a mix of multiple-choice, true/false, and short answer questions worth 20% and is due March 12, 2025
• Research Assignment and Group Project are a paper, videos, and group presentation worth 25% and is due March 31, 2025
• The Final Exam is an in-person written exam worth 40% and date is TBD

What is Health Geography?

• Geography and health are intrinsically linked
• A study of the interaction between people and the environment
• A holistic perspective encompassing society and space
• The role of place, location and geography in health, well-being and disease is conceptulized

Health, Location, and Risk

• Health depends heavily on where you live
• Living near a hazardous waste site can increase your risk of illness
• The Flint Water Crisis in Detroit Michigan exposed individuals to water contaminated with lead and bacteria
• Where you live affects the treatment you get
• Where you live affects your risk of disease or illness

Place and Life Expectancy

• Life expectancy measures the length of time a person is expected to live
• there are some alarming disparities in life expectancy

Concepts of Health

• The World Health Organization (WHO) defines health as a state of complete physical, mental, and social well-being, not merely the absence of disease or infirmity
• 'The availability of resources, both personal and societal, that help us achieve our individual potential' is a shift from ‘a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being'
• Social well-being is an important aspect of health

Concepts of Health: Illness vs Disease

• Illness is a subjective experience
  • Patients suffer from "illnesses," while doctors diagnose and treat "diseases"
  • Illnesses are experiences of discontinuities in states of being and perceived role performances
• Disease is an objective concept
  • Diseases are abnormalities in the function and/or structure of body organs and systems

Epidemiology: The Study of Disease in Populations

• It concerns how data on health is collected
• There's also how mortality (death) and morbidity (sickness, illness, or disease) is collected

Rates

• Age-standardized rates account for age structure differences when making comparisons
• Incidence rates measure the number of new cases within a time interval as a proportion of the at-risk population
  • In 2022, 1,833 new HIV diagnoses. This is equivalent is a 24.9% increase since 2021
• Prevalence rates measure the number of people with a disease or illness at a specific time
  • An estimated 39.9 million people were living with HIV by the end of 2023

Diseases

• Chronic (long-term) diseases, such as heart disease from substance use may be long-lasting or lifelong
• Acute (short-term) diseases, such as overdose from substance use can lead to death
• Infectious diseases are caused by organisms that spread between directly, for instance, COVID-19
• Impairment refers to physical or mental functional inability
• Disability refers to a socially or culturally constructed form of exclusion

Geographical Concepts

• Location is defined as 45°25'24.0″N 75°41'08.7"W
• Place is defined as meaning or emotion attached to a location
• Therapeutic landscapes concern meanings of place and the culturally specific relationship between place and health
  • With First Nations People, this includes sweat lodges lile at East York's Michael Garron Hospital (MGH)

Geographical Concepts: Distance

• The distance that separates places is measured via these questions
  • How far are people from facilities delivering healthcare?
  • How far are people from a possible source of pollution?
  • Over what distances do diseases spread?
• Social distancing is for COVID-19 and requres maintaining a 2 meter or 6-foot distance from others.

Geographical Concepts: Distance and Separation

• Outside of measuring distance from point A to B, consider the following
  • spatial separation in terms of travel time, for example, or travel cost, or people's estimates of such separation (“cognitive distance”)
  • the social distance that separates people (in terms of class, income, race, gender or lifestyle) from others
  • distance itself poses few barriers if we consider the journeys made rapidly by air travel between far-flung places but plays a key role in understanding the source of an illness for example, COVID-19, Ebola

Geographical Concepts: Scale, Time, and Environment

• Scale can range from neighborhoods, cities, regions, countries, continents and global. Examples being COVID-19, Polio, e-coli contamination in Alberta and Saskatchewan.
  • The CFIA issued food recall warnings on January 28, 2022 and February 6, 2022 for Hankook (Korean characters only) brand Original Kimchi with best before dates of January 23, 2022 and January 29, 2022
  • Both products were sold in 2L containers with a net weight of 1670 g and UPC code 6 23431 00030 4. The recalled products were distributed in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
• Time-scale matters as much as spatial scale
• Environment includes consideration of the physical world and how it impacts us. E.g. the closing of the Rideau Canal for winter activities in 2023.
• Disease Ecology dictates one cannot understand the distribution of a disease, particularly an infectious or parasitic disease without knowing about its relationship to local and regional ecologies including; interactions between topography, climate, water, soils, plants, and animals.

Group Exercise

• Are examples of how place-specific cultural or social practices influence health behaviors and outcomes to be presented