Update: Spatial aspects of epidemiology: The interface with medical geography
Update: Spatial aspects of epidemiology: The interface with medical geography
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DOI：
10.1093/oxfordjournals.epirev.a018010
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发表时间：
2000-01-01
影响因子：
5.5
通讯作者：
Glass, GE
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Glass, GE
医学地理学和流行病学有着共同的目标，即理解疾病过程和改进卫生干预方法。虽然它们有着共同的历史，但这些领域已经分化，并发展出不同的，往往是互补的方法来解决相同类型的问题。医学地理学与流行病学的不同之处在于它的基本重点是应用地理学的概念和方法来调查与健康相关的主题（1）。就像其领域内的其他分支学科一样，医学地理学试图整合各种社会，物理和生物科学的概念和方法，以创建一个独特的专业。在医学地理学发展的大部分时间里，并一直延续到现在，医学地理学的重点仍然是从生态学的角度看待健康。它的重点是人类行为与环境的相互作用，以产生观察到的健康结果，因此，除了疾病发生率或患病率的空间差异的传统问题之外，与了解个人风险认知和运动模式的变化相关的研究也开始发挥作用（2，3）。与此相对应的是这些研究问题的实际应用，例如医疗保健提供系统的最佳结构和网络设计（4）。相比之下，流行病学是有目的的健康促进和疾病预防，重点是为特定健康问题的调查提供范例，并为这些问题提供病因学解释，特别是从生物学角度（5）。从医学地理学的角度来看，流行病学提供了一个额外的丰富的方法，概念和信息来源，可以纳入研究感兴趣的问题。
Medical geography and epidemiology share the common goal of understanding disease processes and improving methods of health interventions. While they share a common history, the fields have diverged and developed different, often complementary, approaches to the same types of problems. Medical geography differs from epidemiology in its underlying focus on applying the concepts and methods of geography to investigate health-related topics (1). Much like other subdisciplines within its field, medical geography attempts to integrate concepts and methods from various social, physical, and biological sciences to create a unique specialty. Throughout much of its development and continuing to the present, the focus of medical geography remains very much on an ecologic perspective of health. Its emphasis is on the interplay of the behavior of humans and the environment to generate observed health outcomes so that, in addition to the traditional issue of spatial variation in disease incidence or prevalence, research related to understanding variation in individual risk perception and movement patterns has come into play (2, 3). Coupled with this is the practical application of these research issues, such as the optimal structure and network design of health care delivery systems (4).In contrast, epidemiology is purposive for health promotion and disease prevention, with a focus on providing paradigms for the investigation of specific health problems and providing etiologic explanations for these problems, especially from a biological perspective (5). From a medical geography perspective, epidemiology provides an additional rich source of methods, concepts, and information that can be incorporated to study problems of interest.