This open access contributed volume is the first to address Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) from a place-based perspective with a transdisciplinary, global outlook. In this open access book, experts from geography, public health, urban planning, sociology, architecture, and more respond to growing calls for action on SDoH to improve health outcomes and promote health equity. Through theoretical considerations and case studies, the book explores how a spatial perspective influences, expands, and enriches understanding of SDoH across different scales and applications. Failing to account for patterns of structural health factors using an explicitly spatial approach can lead to biased, misinterpreted, or incomplete analyses. Adopting a geographic, place-based perspective remains crucial for SDoH studies from theoretical, analytical, and technological standpoints.
The chapters in this book highlight areas needing further attention, such as spatial mismatch in health services, the complexities of social and spatial networks, and the impact of government policies on health disparities. Guided by SDoH frameworks, the book is divided into the sections on conceptualizing Social-Spatial Determinants of Health (S&SDoH), integrating S&SDoH in practice, methodological approaches and techniques for measuring S&SDoH, and empirical illustrations of S&SDoH.
1 Introducing the Social-Spatial Determinants of Health.- 2 Re-Rooting
the Social Determinants of Health Within a Trauma-Informed, Integrated Health
Geography.- 3 Defining the Social-Spatial Determinants of Health Through
Transformative Critical Praxis.- 4 Residual Effects of Historical Place-Based
Discrimination on Health.- 5 Resources for Health Within Latinx Communities.-
6 Toward a Transdisciplinary Theory of Access.- 7 Operationalization of
Social-Spatial Determinants of Health.- 8 Spatial Practices that Reshape the
Social Determinants of Health for Families with Young Children Affected by
Disadvantage.- 9 Design Guidelines for Safe Environment to Improve Aging in
Place.- 10 Socially Assistive Technologies for Older Adults in Their
Residential Environment.- 11 Teaching and Learning About Geo-Social
Determinants of Health.- 12 When to Use What.- 13 Gentrification and Health.-
14 Relative Time and Social-Spatial Determinants of Health.- 15 A
Social-Spatial Network Approach to Characterize Social Determinants of Health
in Syndemics Research Within an Intersectionality Framework.- 16 Making
Space.- 17 Applications of GIS to Spatial Patterns of Disease and Health.- 18
Understanding Malaria Transmission and Control Within and Between Regions in
Zambia Using a Socio-Spatial Determinants of Health Framework.- 19 The
Interstate Highway System as a Tool of Segregation and the Subsequent Impact
on Community Health.
Marynia A. Kolak, Ph.D., M.F.A., M.S. is a health geographer and spatial epidemiologist at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she leads the Healthy Regions & Policies Lab. Her research explores how "place" impacts health outcomes, integrating a socio-ecological view of health, spatial data science, and community-centered design to investigate regional and neighborhood health equity. Kolak received the Emerging Scholar Award in Health Geography in 2022.
Imelda K. Moise, PhD, MPH is a health geographer and Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Miami, Florida. She directs the Geography of Inequalities Lab (GaIL) and the Global Health Studies program at the same institution. Dr. Moise is renowned for her research on at-risk families and communities, utilizing mixed methods, particularly geospatial analysis, to investigate health inequities. She also serves on the Editorial Board of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, where she contributes to the Geographic Methods section.
