Publications and Research
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-8-2022
Abstract
The field of health geographics is rapidly growing in its methods and epistemologies. This is a review of the open-source journal International Journal of Health Geographics, and the trends in disease surveillance over ten years (2009-2018). Drawing from research review methodologies, we wrote a Python script to quantify research trends within the field of geographic disease surveillance, finding many articles focusing on population health, techniques of GIS, qualitative techniques, and geospatial technology for health monitoring. This was foundational in conducting an in-depth qualitative lexical analysis of article content and epistemologies. Overall, we concluded that over the time period, the Journal has become progressively more epistemologically nuanced through innovative geospatial methodologies. We believe that the inclusion of broader ontologies of sex, gender, race, and obesity could and should eventually be accommodated by ongoing increased rigor in geographic health methodologies and data collection practices.