摘要："Medical geography uses the concepts and techniques of the discipline of geography to investigate health-related topics" (p. 3). "Health" is a broad and pervasive concept, and it is not surprising that medical geography provides an umbrella for a rich variety of scholarship. This reviewer subscribes to the convention that two major interest areas characterize this particular subdiscipline of geography -the "geography of health and disease" and the "geography of health care delivery." A third, but less developed focus is on the dynamic relationship between the incidence of health and ill-health and the spatial configuration of health care resources. Interest in health-related topics, including those embraced by medical geography, has expanded over the last decade, in consequence, at least in part, of increasing societal awareness of the role of environmental hazards in disease etiology, regional imbalances in the availability of effective health care, and so on. The work of medical geographers is of interest to regional scientists because of the complex but strong links between health and the status and prospects of regions, especially in developing countries.
