Courses

GEOG 4074 - Medical Geography (Fall 2011)

• Medical geographers broady study why diseases are where they are, how they spread from one place to another, and how health and healthcare vary spatially. The first portion of the course focuses on impacts of the physical environment on health and disease, including impacts of climate variability and change on disease distributions. The second part of the class examines the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and the ways in which the disease has affected all aspects of society in some way. Finally, the remainder of the course focuses more specifically on health-related issues in human environments, including access to healthcare and the obesity epidemic. Throughout the course, underlying processes that help explain the spatial patterns of health and disease-related issues at various spatial scales are emphasized.
• Current Syllabus (subject to change)

If you have a particular interest in health and disease from a social science perspective, or you wish to take courses to complement a pre-med major, you may be interested in the Medicine and Society minor. Medical Geography is an elective for the minor.

GEOG 5014 - Geographic Theory and Research (Fall 2011)

• This discussion-based class introduces students to the foundations of the discipline of geography and major theoretical shifts throughout the course of its history since ~1500, with an emphasis on Western geographic thought. We examine how physical and human geography, human ecological concerns, and the spatial perspective have been synthesized into a unified academic discipline. Additionally, students are introduced to the geographic research process and research design.
• Current Syllabus (subject to change)

GEOG 5214 - Health and the Global Environment (Spring 2012)

• Complex relationships between environmental conditions and health or disease are examined in this discussion-based course. “Environment” is broadly defined – the term as we will use it refers to the surroundings of an individual or a population that affect health in some way including social, political, built, cultural, and economic environments as well as the more obvious physical or natural environment, and, perhaps most importantly, we explore how variability in multiple environments interact to prevent or support disease emergence. Dynamic interconnections between the various environments are significant; the migration of people (and the associated movement of diseases) is often driven by challenges in multiple environments.
• Current Syllabus (subject to change)