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Geographies of Health and Wellbeing (GoHWell)

Research Themes

Wider Determinants of Health and Wellbeing

We are interested in the political, social and economic determinants of health and health inequalities:

  • Welfare, health and wellbeing: availability and use of housing wealth (Searle); welfare state regimes and health inequalities (Bambra); social enterprises and new spaces of welfare (Atkinson)
  • Economy, health and wellbeing: work, worklessness and health (Bambra, Joyce, Warren); economic recession and health (Bambra, Curtis, Easton, Riva); economic and social regeneration and health (Bambra, Curtis, Warren); disability (Bambra, Warren); migration, health and wellbeing (Curtis)
  • Public policy and health: healthy public policy (Bambra, Curtis); health Impact Assessment (Curtis); policy discourse and practice at local and global scales (Atkinson, Colls); regeneration policy (Hudson)
  • Area level health: spatial inequalities in health (Bambra, Curtis, Riva); inequalities in health care (Atkinson, Curtis); resilience, health and wellbeing (Atkinson, Bambra, Curtis)

Cultural Geographies of Health and Wellbeing

We apply theoretical insights from cultural geography to health issues, especially theories of embodiment:

  • Critical Approaches to Framing Health Risks: food production and food consumption; physical activity; BMI assessment and the obesity epidemic (Atkins, Colls)
  • Social science for medical humanities (Atkinson)
  • Geographies of 'the body': Fat Bodies and Critical Approaches to Obesity (Colls); spaces and practices of care of the body (Atkinson)

Environment, Health and Wellbeing

We are interested in how both the natural and the built environments interact with health and wellbeing:

  • Spatial and environmental epidemiology: air quality, social deprivation, and respiratory morbidity and mortality (Dunn); built environment and physical activity (Riva)
  • Health-environment relationships: the environment and health in urban (Dunn, Riva) and rural areas (Riva); environmental regeneration of post-industrial landscapes and brown field land (Bambra, Curtis, Atkinson); therapeutic landscapes and therapeutic design (Curtis)
  • Risks perception: risks to health from poor air quality (Dunn); conceptions of risk (Curtis, Riva)
  • Science/social science interface: socio-ecological approaches to health and wellbeing (Dunn); engineering for society (Bambra, Curtis, Searle)

Developing Health Geography Research Methods

We contribute to the development of quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods and their application in health geographies, public health, the wider social sciences as well as the interface between the natural and social sciences:

  • Discursive approaches (Atkins, Atkinson, Colls)
  • Ethnographic approaches (Atkinson)
  • Feminist research methods (Colls)
  • GIS and spatial epidemiology (Curtis, Dunn, Joyce, Riva)
  • Health Impact Assessment (Curtis)
  • In-depth interviews and focus groups (Atkinson, Joyce, Searle, Warren)
  • Mixed methods (Searle)
  • Participatory GIS (Dunn)
  • Participatory research (Atkinson, Colls)
  • Survey research and secondary data analysis (Bambra, Curtis, Easton, Riva, Searle, Warren)
  • Systematic reviews (Bambra, Joyce)