Arguments in Health Geography: On Sub‐Disciplinary Progress, Observation, Translation

Abstract

To introduce the sub-discipline of health geography and its developing interests, this paper initially reviews the different forms of arguments mounted by researchers. First, arguments on the nature and progress of inquiry that speak to directions, concepts, theories and methods. Second, using health care settings, public health and environmental health as illustrations, arguments that interpret and explain health and health care in different ways. A final series of discussions takes the theme of arguments further in terms of how they might affect change in the world. Specifically, health geography is situated within four broad movements currently unfolding in the larger disciplines to which it contributes. With regard to the parent discipline of human geography, the 'policy turn' and more generally the idea of 'public geography'. With regard to the health sciences, Evidenced-Based Health Care and Knowledge Translation.

The complex spaces of co‐production, volunteering, ageing and care

“…As Andrews et al (2012) note, the delivery of care from practitioner to client is usually limited to specific spaces e.g., the GP surgery or home: spaces that are organised for the efficient delivery of prescribed care. Here our research provides a key contribution to the literature on co-production.…”

“…The literature on volunteerism, health and place is large, but brings into sharp focus the ways in which voluntary sector activities are shaped by place (Power, 2009), creating new landscapes of care provision (Power & Hall, 2018), and new processes, outcomes and everyday practices of volunteerism (Skinner & Power, 2011). It is discursively predicated on a horizontal relationship between these actors which, despite its rhetorical power, is difficult to realise in practice, confined as it is to offices, surgeries, or meeting rooms (Andrews et al, 2012). Co-production is a profoundly relational activity, a negotiation and transaction between multiple actors including the care receiver, health and social-care practitioners, and care givers (family, friends or volunteers).…”

Geographical thinking in nursing inquiry, part one: locations, contents, meanings

“…Five developments are particularly important. Each of these is far more complex than briefly described here (each of these could be, and are, the subject of numerous books and journal papers in their own right), still a brief overview is helpful (see also Andrews & Evans, ; Andrews et al ., ).…”

Global Health, Geographical Contingency, and Contingent Geographies

“…T his article emerges from two concerns: first, that the potential health significance of much geographical research is being footnoted rather than foregrounded; second, that this trend is particularly acute in relation to the contemporary field of critical global health studies. The first concern originates, somewhat ironically, in the hugely successful efforts of health geographers in carving out a distinct subdisciplinary identity (Andrews et al 2012). Yet, the price of this success is that research on health is too often siloed within this relatively small subdisciplinary realm.…”