Practicing Health Geography

Prestige Tatenda Makanga is an applied geo-information scientist with a primary interest in global health. He is Chairman and Senior Lecturer in the Surveying and Geomatics department at the Midlands State University (MSU) in Gweru, Zimbabwe. He leads the Place Alert Labs (PALs – ww5.msu.ac.zw/pals) initiative at MSU. The PALs program is a mixed methods health geography initiative that explores how places shape local health experiences and health outcomes. Much of the evidence generated from the work at PALs is translated into decision aids and tools that are used to target health interventions.

• Chapter 1. Introducing Health Geography.- SECTION 1: HEALTH AND SPACE.- Chapter 2. Generating spatial demographic data for health in Africa.- Chapter 3. Geographies of disease burden in Namibia.- Chapter 4. Geographically Precise Public Health: Case of Southern Mozambique.- Chapter 5. Spatial epidemiology of urban health risks in select West African Cities.- Chapter 6. Methods of measuring spatial accessibility to health care in Uganda.- SECTION 2: HEALTH AND PLACE.- Chapter 7. Representing health: an Afrocentric perspective from Ghana.- Chapter 8. Access to maternal health in regions of Rwanda: A qualitative study.- Chapter 9. Risk of food allergy in Accra, Ghana: An application of photovoice.- Chapter 10. Determinants of maternal health in regions of Southern Mozambique.- SECTION 3: GEO-ENABLING HEALTH DECISIONS.- Chapter 11 . Geo-enabled trauma registries: The case of Cape Town, South Africa.- Chapter 12. Geography of alcohol exposure: Policy and programme implications for Cape Town, South Africa.- Chapter 13. Geography, climate change and health adaptation planning in Uganda.- Chapter 14. Mobile Health Geographies: A case from Zimbabwe.