• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.48 no.2
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• pp.218-238
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• 2013

The objective of my paper is to investigate historical change in concepts of medical geography and to present its historical vision. Modern medical geography was established in the name of medical topography in Europe where it had to control tropical diseases in the course of exploration and voyages for colonial interests. England developed medical geography in the name of sanitary reform, France did so for civilizing mission, and geomedicine prevailed in Germany. The twentieth century witnessed two traditions of medical geography, with focus on disease ecology and medical care system, respectively. In addition, the paper emphasizes the significance of cartography of disease as knowledge as power. As the identity of place becomes increasingly important in relation to health at the around of the twenty-first century, geography of health has emerged as a new promising discipline independently of medical and public health geography.

• Journal of the Economic Geographical Society of Korea
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.155-168
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• 2023

Health geography has gained importance due to healthy smart cities, regions, and the integration of geo-internet and blockchain technologies. This study explores the intersection of geography and health, focusing on specific health challenges faced by individuals and groups. Using observational and descriptive methods, the study takes a regional approach to illuminate the socio-economic factors that are critical to addressing global health challenges. Drawing on academic literature and practical research, a concise case study of health challenges in Uzbekistan is presented, offering valuable insights. The analysis of data from informative articles and UN publications highlights the interdisciplinary nature of health geography and its practical applicability for researchers and policymakers. The findings underscore the important role of geography and health sciences in addressing region-specific diseases while highlighting the importance of spatial analysis in understanding environmental hazards and health impacts, including disease outbreaks.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.677-699
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• 2012

Climate changes may cause substantial changes in spatial patterns and distribution of vector-borne diseases (VBD's), which will result in a significant threat to humans and emerge as an important public health problem that the international society needs to solve. As global warming becomes widespread and the Korean peninsula characterizes subtropical climate, the potentials of climate-driven disease outbreaks and spread rapidly increase with changes in land use, population distributions, and ecological environments. Vector-borne diseases are typically infected by insects such as mosquitoes and ticks, and infected hosts and vectors increased dramatically as the habitat ranges of the VBD agents have been expanded for the past 20 years. Medical geography integrates and processes a wide range of public health data and indicators at both local and regional levels, and ultimately helps researchers identify spatiotemporal mechanism of the diseases determining interactions and relationships between spatial and non-spatial data. Spatial epidemiology is a new and emerging area of medical geography integrating geospatial sciences, environmental sciences, and epidemiology to further uncover human health-environment relationships. An introduction of GIS-based disease monitoring system to the public health surveillance system is among the important future research agenda that medical geography can significantly contribute to. Particularly, real-time monitoring methods, early-warning systems, and spatial forecasting of VBD factors will be key research fields to understand the dynamics of VBD's.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.34 no.5
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• pp.473-491
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• 1999

세균성 이질은 국내 제1종 법정 전염병으로 분류되어 관리되고 있는 질환으로서 1998년 이후 그 발병 사례가 급속히 증가하고 있다. 본 연구는 1999년 3월 부산시 사상구에서 집단 발병한 세균성 이질을 대상으로 하여, 각 환자들의 발병 시점과 장소의 분포패턴에 대한 지리학적 고찰을 목적으로 한다. 환자분포의 특징적 공간패턴과 그들의 시계열적 확산 양상 등을 탐색하기 위한 방법론은 보건지리학과 지도학 및 공간통계학에 기반을 둔 공간분석기법을 중심으로 설정하였다. 분석자료는 해당 지역의 수치지형도, 지적도, 인구 센서스 자료를 포함한 GIS 데이터베이스로 구축되었다. 인구분포를 감안한 밀도구분도를 바탕으로 개별환자의 위치자료와 동 단위로 집계된 자료를 자료의 형태에 따라 분석기법을 달리하였으며, 환자 발생 밀도, 상대적 위험지수 등을 지도화하여 역학자료의 시각적 통계적 분석을 수행하였다. 환자분포의 공간적 중심위치와 분산의 변화 등 기술적 통계분석과 함께 제1차 공간속성을 커널추정법으로 찾아보았다. 이와 더불어 ‘공간적 의존성’과 관련된 제2차 공간속성은 K-함수와 시뮬레이션을 통해 분석하여 군집성 등이 통계적으로 확인되었다. 본 연구를 통해 역학조사시 GIS의 활용사례가 제시되었으며, 모집단 인구를 고려한 확률지도 작성 기법과 다양한 데이터 가시화 방법, 그리고 시계열별 발생 환자들의 지리적 변이를 분석 하는데 따르는 문제들이 논의되었다.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.203-216
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• 2012

The aim of the research is to lead to suggestions on public health policy, to suggest the direction of accessibility to public health services in rural area through analyzing various health programs and health service system, health care facilities. Nepal's public health policy needs improvement in the quality of the health services as well as accessibility to the services to improve population quality.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.48 no.5
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• pp.768-785
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• 2013

Count data aggregated into areal units such as administrative boundaries are the most important sources of information for geographic research. Despite of ongoing research on spatial cluster analysis of count data, it has received relatively little attention and besides, it is difficult to comprehend research trends as well as major outcomes and challenges. This study aims to review the research literature conducted during the last two decades, to examine methodological characteristics, and finally to discuss some issues and challenges. Methods for indentifying spatial clusters have been used in various fields including geography, criminology, and epidemiology. However, their methodological features are not only quite distinct from each other, but there are issues related to the statistical reliability. Therefore, these have to be taken into account carefully when particular methods are used, and further empirical research about methodological issues and the development of analysis tools is needed.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.18 no.4
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• pp.473-493
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• 2012

Malaria infection is sensitively influenced by regional meteorological conditions along with global climate change. Remote sensing techniques have become an important tool for extraction of climatic and environmental factors, including rainfall, temperature, surface water, soil moisture, and land use, which are directly linked to the habitat qualities of malaria mosquitoes. Improvement of sensor fidelity with higher spatial and spectral resolution, new multinational sensor development, and decreased data cost have nurtured diverse remote sensing applications in malaria research. In 1984, eradication of endemic malaria was declared in Korea, but reemergence of malaria was reported in mid-1990s. Considering constant changes in malaria cases since 2000, the epidemiological management of the disease needs careful monitoring. Geographically, northmost counties neighboring North Korea have been ranked high in the number of malaria cases. High infection rates in these areas drew special attention and led to a hypothesis that malaria dispersion in these border counties might be caused by north-origin, malaria-bearing adult mosquitoes. Habitat conditions of malaria mosquitoes are important parameters for prediction of the vector abundance. However, it should be realized that malaria infection and transmission is a complex mechanism, where non-environmental factors, including human behavior, demographic structure, landscape structure, and spatial relationships between human residence and the vector habitats, are also significant considerations in the framework of medical geography.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.583-592
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• 2015

As the increase of an environmental disease has become a social problem after industrialization, academic interest in a spatial difference and characteristics of an environmental disease is on rise. The purpose of this study is to analyze the spatial distribution and characteristics of an environmental disease using the data provided by National Health Insurance Corporation in 2009. This research is focusing on atopic dermatitis among a variety of environmental diseases and shows the map that atopic dermatitis patients are distributed. Also, The Local Moran's I show how spatial autocorrelation of atopic dermatitis patients are distributed. First, the distribution of atopic dermatitis patients show the spatial difference. Second, 42 places including the western part of Incheon are hot spots of atopic dermatitis. Third, 39 places including Danyang are cold spot of atopic dermatitis. Forth, Jeju-si and Seogwipo-si are unusually hot spot of atopic dermatitis. These results have important implications that further research need to be done in public health geography.

• Journal of the Korean association of regional geographers
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.728-738
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• 2015

The main goal of this study to find out the relationship between the volume of tap water usage and the prevalence of environmental diseases and thus derive a conclusion that environmental diseases such as atopic dermatitis, allergic rhinitis, and asthma are subject to spatial factors. The results of this study are summarized as follows: First, the more the household consumes more tap water the higher the instance of atopic dermatitis; second, the number of allergic rhinitis patients increases as the volume of wastewater rises in an area; and finally, the number of asthma patients is not influenced by any of the variables including household water usage volume, industrial water usage volume, and wastewater output volume. This study has proven statistically that water usage volume is closely related to environmental diseases, in particular, to atopic dermatitis, which the authors believe will be used as important basis.

• Journal of the Korean Geographical Society
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• v.47 no.5
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• pp.735-754
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• 2012

Korean society in the 2000 has experienced new many social and spatial issues such as the process of neoliberalism and changes in urban and spatial policies, the development of information and communication technology and reconfiguration of informational social space, radically increasing foreign immigrants and transformation to multicultural society, global warming and environmental injustice, and these new issues have promoted development of social geography in Korea. In addition to a review on them, this paper provides a review on empirical researches on traditional issues which have been dealt with in social geography in the 2000 in Korea. Even though there have been numerous sub-issues, they can be divided into two categories: one is urban and communal social geography including urban housing and residential segregation, urban social problems such as poverty, crime, education, health care, social welfare, urban and rural community building, identity, sense of place, and social movement; the other is social geography of population and migration, including population movement, aged society and social welfare for elderly people, and foreign immigrants and formation of multicultural social space. As some difficult conditions such as path-dependent process of neoliberalism, transformation toward informational, aged, and multicultural society would continue, so social geography in Korea to tackle with these external conditions should deepen its theoretical insights and widen its research issues.