How does place shape our perspectives, experiences, and decisions about health? How do researchers produce knowledge about disease with location technologies? How are treatments conditioned by space? How does the rise of wellness culture privilege certain contexts and render others invisible? These questions highlight some of the geographic dimensions of health and disease that will be explored in this seminar.
Health is produced in place, shaping how we think about our bodies and others, what we do to get or stay healthy. Place is also intimately tied up with health outcomes, a perspective that is slowly moving into various sites of U.S. healthcare. Health- care happens in the home, hospital, and clinic, but also on the move. In the event of infectious disease outbreaks,
quarantine protects the general population, but almost always in ways based on racial, ethnic, and class discrimination. In
western cultures, the operating room gradually became a primary place to treat disease; today, more effort is spent on bringing care to patients in their homes. Location has always been a key metric in epidemiology; the advent of geographic information systems has made place-based analyses possible but also at times problematic. Its use is debated in the field of public health and related environmental health sciences. The rise of digital health technologies has made remote and mobile healthcare possible, creating new communication opportunities between patient and provider. Emerging health technologies are also reconditioning the role of patients, caregivers, and health providers, leading to a host of new ethical questions. As you can see: The place-based dimensions of health, illness, and care provide many opportunities for social analysis.
Ali Kenner, "SCTS 615: Geographies of Health", contributed by Ali Kenner and Eliza Nobles, STS Infrastructures, Platform for Experimental Collaborative Ethnography, last modified 27 August 2018, accessed 23 April 2024. https://stsinfrastructures.org/content/scts-615-geographies-health
Critical Commentary
How does place shape our perspectives, experiences, and decisions about health? How do researchers produce knowledge about disease with location technologies? How are treatments conditioned by space? How does the rise of wellness culture privilege certain contexts and render others invisible? These questions highlight some of the geographic dimensions of health and disease that will be explored in this seminar.
Health is produced in place, shaping how we think about our bodies and others, what we do to get or stay healthy. Place is also intimately tied up with health outcomes, a perspective that is slowly moving into various sites of U.S. healthcare. Health- care happens in the home, hospital, and clinic, but also on the move. In the event of infectious disease outbreaks,
quarantine protects the general population, but almost always in ways based on racial, ethnic, and class discrimination. In
western cultures, the operating room gradually became a primary place to treat disease; today, more effort is spent on bringing care to patients in their homes. Location has always been a key metric in epidemiology; the advent of geographic information systems has made place-based analyses possible but also at times problematic. Its use is debated in the field of public health and related environmental health sciences. The rise of digital health technologies has made remote and mobile healthcare possible, creating new communication opportunities between patient and provider. Emerging health technologies are also reconditioning the role of patients, caregivers, and health providers, leading to a host of new ethical questions. As you can see: The place-based dimensions of health, illness, and care provide many opportunities for social analysis.