Place and the Social-Spatial Determinants of Health

Abstract

This open access contributed volume is the first to address Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) from a place-based perspective with a transdisciplinary, global outlook. In this open access book, experts from geography, public health, urban planning, sociology, architecture, and more respond to growing calls for action on SDoH to improve health outcomes and promote health equity. Through theoretical considerations and case studies, the book explores how a spatial perspective influences, expands, and enriches understanding of SDoH across different scales and applications. Failing to account for patterns of structural health factors using an explicitly spatial approach can lead to biased, misinterpreted, or incomplete analyses. Adopting a geographic, place-based perspective remains crucial for SDoH studies from theoretical, analytical, and technological standpoints. The chapters in this book highlight areas needing further attention, such as spatial mismatch in health services, the complexities of social and spatial networks, and the impact of government policies on health disparities. Guided by SDoH frameworks, the book is divided into the sections on conceptualizing Social-Spatial Determinants of Health (S&SDoH), integrating S&SDoH in practice, methodological approaches and techniques for measuring S&SDoH, and empirical illustrations of S&SDoH.