INTERNATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAL UNION

UNION GEOGRAHIQUE INTERNATIONALE

COMMISSION 13

HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT

SANTE ET ENVIRONMENT

CIRCULAR LETTER No. 1 AUTUMN 2003

LETTRE CIRCULAIRE No.1 AUTOMNE 2003 CONTENTS Page

Editor’s Notes 1 Editorial 2 Number of CHE Commission Members by Country 4 Meetings in 2002 5 Meetings in 2003 7 Future Meetings Planned 7 Recent Publications 8 Members News 9 Forthcoming IGU conferences 10 Other IGU News 11 Websites of Interest 11 Electronic Newsletter Form 11 IGU Commission on Health and the Environment Steering Committee Members 12

EDITOR’S NOTE: Correspondences to the editor should be addressed to:

Professor Mark Rosenberg or Dr Sarah Atkinson Chair, IGU Commission 13 Secretary, IGU Commission 13 Health and Environment Health and Environment Department of Geography School of Geography Queen’s University Mansfield Cooper Building Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 University of Manchester M13 9PL CANDA UK

Tel: 613-533-6046 Tel: 0044 161 275 3647/ 3636 Fax: 613-533-6122 Fax: 0044 161 265 7878 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected]

1 EDITORIAL

Dear Colleagues.

Although you are receiving this newsletter in the autumn of 2003 and it is the first newsletter of 2003, I would like to use it to discuss the business of the Commission over the past 12 months.

I would like to spend the first part of this report talking about the Regional Conference of the IGU, held in Durban, South Africa 4 to 7 August 2002. First, I would like to thank Cathy Oelofse of the University of Natal (Durban) who acted as our local organiser. In fact, Cathy did double duty as the Chairperson responsible for the excursions at the Durban meeting as well as our local organiser. In both roles, she did exemplary jobs. Our commission held two lively sessions and an informal business meeting at the end of the second session. As one might expect, many of the papers presented were from commission members who either work or study in southern Africa or whose research interests are connected to some aspect of health and the environment in a developing world context. I would like to thank all of the presenters and their co-authors for their important contributions to our commission. Beyond these sessions, the themes that encourage all of us to participate in our commission I found coming up everywhere from Nelson Mandela’s truly inspirational speech at the opening session of the conference, to papers presented in other commission sessions and in the poster sessions that took place during the conference.

At our informal business meeting, I was able to announce that the IGU General Assembly had voted to make various changes to its constitution. In particular, I am extremely pleased to announce two particular changes, which I had personally lobbied to change for many years. The term “full” and “corresponding” members of IGU commissions are now replaced by the terms Steering Committee and Members. Secondly, the old rule that there could only be 10 full members including the chairperson and secretary has been changed to say that the Steering Committee will “normally” consist of 10 members including the chairperson and secretary. What this means is that we have more flexibility to shape our commission to reflect places where geographic researchers on health and the environment are active participants in our commission. To this end, I have asked Susana Curto (Argentina), Thomas Krafft (Germany) and Cosimo Palagiano to join the Steering Committee.

The second item discussed at our business meeting was the IGU World Congress to be held in Glasgow, 2004 and what we would like to do as a commission. In an initial proposal to the local organizers, our commission proposed to hold sessions on the following themes: the place of children - the health of their environments; health variations – geographical perspectives from around the world; health and education issues; linking health and the environment - issues in the developed and developing world; health, health care and policy – issues in the developed and developing world; and a plenary session. Those who attended the business meeting also discussed whether our commission should organize a pre-conference meeting. The consensus was that we should have such a meeting. Since then I have heard from a few of our members and all have thought it would be a good idea. I have also had a preliminary offer from some of our German members to host the meeting. It may surprise some of you, but holding a pre-conference

2 meeting in Germany would likely save many of our members money because of the relative costs of staying in the United Kingdom compared to staying in Germany and for those travelling to the UK from many parts of the world there would be no additional travel costs since they will likely need to fly through a European airport on their way to Glasgow. Beyond the economics of such a meeting, the advantages are the opportunity to have a more focused and concentrated time to share our research with each other. At a pre-conference meeting, sessions can be organized that allow speakers more time to present their research and the more focused interaction of a small group where research can be discussed informally compared to the World Congress where the time each presenter has is usually not very long (maybe 15 minutes) and outside of the sessions you are part of thousands of delegates. It is also an opportunity to have a more intense and focused time to discuss the future of the commission from 2004 to 2008.

Details of the World Congress in Glasgow and the Commission meeting in Germany can be found later in this newsletter and on our new website (see below).

The Commission was co-sponsor of two exceptionally successful meetings in the past 12 months. In December 2002, we co-sponsored Geo-Health 2002 in Wellington, New Zealand and in July 2003 we co-sponsored the 10th International Medical Geography Symposium in Manchester, England. Reports on both of these meetings can be found in other parts of the newsletter.

The other major initiative of the Commission over the past 12 months is that we now have a functioning website at http://geog.queensu.ca/igu-com-he. We have intentionally kept it simple and functional, so that colleagues with older and less powerful computing systems hopefully will not have trouble accessing it. Please forward any comments you have about our website to me.

As chairperson of the Commission, the one problem we have had difficulty overcoming is producing the newsletter over the past 24 months. As most of you know, we only receive $600 US per year to run the Commission, which basically means everything is done on a volunteer basis and with the contributions of the School of Geography at the University of Manchester and the Department of Geography at Queen’s University. To both groups we owe an enormous debt of appreciation. Secondly, we have been pooling the money from the IGU so that we will have a limited amount of funds to help 2 or 3 researchers from developing countries to participate in the World Congress in Glasgow and the Commission meeting in Germany. So that we can continue to pool our funds to support researchers and as a way of producing a newsletter in a more timely fashion, I propose that this be the last hard copy newsletter and that like many of the other IGU commissions we move to having an electronic newsletter that will be posted on our website. To accomplish this, we require all members of the commission to send us their e-mail addresses and to this end you will find a form at the end of this newsletter. For those of you who do not have e- mail, the newsletter will also be posted on our website where it can be accessed from any computer that has an internet connection.

3 If you have any thoughts about switching to an electronic newsletter, any news about conferences, your own research and publications or any way we can make the Commission more useful to you, please feel free to contact me at [email protected].

Mark Rosenberg Chairperson, IGU Commission on Health and the Environment

Number of CHE Commission Members by Country

IGU Commission on Health and the Environment Membership as of 31 December 2002

Country Members Country Members

Argentina 3 Kenya 1 Australia 4 Korea 2 Austria 1 Mauritania 1 Bangladesh 5 Mauritius 1 Belgium 2 Mexico 2 Benin 1 Netherlands 4 Brazil 3 New Zealand 4 Brunei 1 Nigeria 5 Burkina Fasso 1 Northern Ireland 1 Canada 15 Norway 1 Chile 1 Pakistan 1 China 4 Poland 3 Cuba 2 Portugal 3 Czech Republic 4 Romania 1 Egypt 1 Russia 5 Estonia 1 Saudia Arabia 1 Fiji 1 Slovenia 1 Finland 2 South Africa 11 France 18 Spain 3 Germany 11 Sri Lanka 1 Hong Kong 1 Sweden 4 Hungary 3 Switzerland 6 India 19 Taiwan 2 Indonesia 1 Thailand 1 Ireland 2 Turkey 1 Israel 1 United Kingdom 15 Italy 7 United States 18 Ivory Coast 1 West Indies 2 Japan 4 Zaire 1 Jordan 1 Total 223

4 Meetings in 2002

Geographical Renaissance at the Dawn of the Millenium

As part of IGU 2002, “Geographical Renaissance at the Dawn of the Millenium”, the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission on Health and the Environment (CHE), organized two symposia. The first symposium, Environmental Health in the Developing World, was held on 5 August 2002 and the second symposium, Geographies of Health Inequalities in the Developing and Developed World, was held 6 August 2002. The CHE also sponsored 6 poster presentations. In addition, a business meeting of the CHE was held at the conclusion of the second symposium.

At the business meeting Professor Rosenberg reported on the changes to the IGU Constitution and in particular the changes that directly affected the commissions (i.e., changing the terminology to a Steering Committee and Regular Members). There was also a discussion of the plans of the CHE for the IGU World Congress in Glasgow in 2004. There was a consensus that the CHE should hold a pre-congress meeting if a local organizer could be found (see below).

Symposium I - Environmental Health in the Developing World

Chair: M. Rosenberg Viljoen, G, Environmental and health conditions: A comparative analysis between "black" and "coloured" infromal settlements on the Cape Flats Krafft, T, Kremer, A, Environmental degradation and health hazards in medium sized towns in India: Research methods for studying the interdependency between urban growth and health risks Brillet, P, A geographical typology of malaria Mthembu, AT, The study of epidemics in the three selected areas of the northern part of KwaZulu-Natal

Symposium II - Geographies of Health Inequalities in the Developing and Developed World

Chair: C. Oelofse Rosenberg, M.W, Moore, E.G, Aging across Canada: Comparing service rich and service poor communities Sinha, B., Health inequality and social hierarchy in a globalized regime of 21st Century Wang, W, Li, R; Li, H, Regional assessment on health and development of China Pillay, R, Using GIS to spatially portray the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and its demographic consequences in selected countries in sub-Saharan Africa Cooper, A.K, du Plessis, P.M, Mapping fatal injury data for crime and injury prevention

5 Posters

Garbharran, H.P; Edwards, M.J; Smith, M.A, PARTNERS : A model of HIV/AIDS prevention in informal settlements Edwards, M.J, Garbharran, H.P; O'Hara Murdock; Smith, M.A, Community health diagnosis of three informal settlements in Durban, KwaZulu-Natal Garbharran, H.P, Edwards, M.J; O' Hara Murdock, P.;Smith, M.A, The US-South Africa research partnership for KwaZulu-Natal's infromal communities Smith, M.A, Garbharran, H.P; Edwards, M.J; O'Hara Murdock, Safe water/sanitation and hygiene intervention strategies for three informal settlements in Durban : KwaZulu-Natal Smith, K, , The bioaccessibility of soil-associated Pb ingested by sheep across Mid-Wales Booysen, I. Visualising secondary health data to portray well-being patterns in South Africa

New Aspects of Health and the Environment for Rapid Developing China

As part of the Chinese National Geographical Congress in Beijing in November 2002, the Chinese Committee of Medical Geography (Chairperson, Professor Wuyi Wang, Vice- Chairperson, Professor Sheng Sheng Gong), held a symposium on new aspects of health and the environment for rapid developing China.

GeoHealth 2002

The GeoHealth 2002 Conference was held in Wellington, New Zealand from 3-5 December. The event was co-sponsored by the NZ Ministry of Health, Victoria University of Wellington, Eagle Technology, Critchlow Associates and the IGU Commission on Health and the Environment. Delegates from 15 countries attended, travelling from as far as Finland, Japan, Canada, and Sri Lanka. Hence many new research collaborations and friendships were formed, encouraged by the warm New Zealand sunshine and hospitality.

The focus of the conference was on using GIS approaches to better inform health decision- making. The importance of this was emphasised by an excellent range of keynote addresses with Chuck Croner (CDC), Bill Davenhall (ESRI) and Stefano Lazzari (WHO) looking at the wide policy needs of the future, and Mike Goodchild (UCSB), Gerry Rushton (Iowa) and Danny Dorling (Leeds) exploring some thought-provoking methodological challenges for the research communities.

Hence paper sessions explored many of the themes for geographical techniques to support policy. These included the spatial infrastructure approaches of national health organisations (e.g. the UK NHS, Health Canada and the NZ Ministry of Health), addressing health inequalities, accessibility to health care, surveillance of vector-borne diseases and accidents, using the web for health information, and developments in spatial analyses. These provided the springboard for the exchanges of problems and possibilities between the policy-makers and research groups, which was immensely worthwhile.

6

Meetings in 2003

10th International Symposium in Medical Geography

From 14 to 18 July 2003, the 10th International Symposium in Medical Geography was held in Manchester, England. Approximately 133 medical/health geographers from 23 countries met for five days. There were 30 regular sessions, a poster session plus opening plenary and closing sessions. The presenters at the plenary session were:

Professor Anthony Gatrell (University of Lancaster, UK) who spoke on “Complexity and geographies of health: a modern and global synthesis?”; Professor Mark Rosenberg (Queen’s University, Canada) who spoke on “Taking account of people in the geographies of health and health care”; and Dr. Robin Kearns (University of Auckland, NZ), who spoke on “Connecting landscapes of health and medicine”.

Topics covered in the regular and poster sessions included “agendas”, “healthier places”, “environment and disease”, “community health services”, “mental health”, “therapeutic landscapes”, “access to primary services”, “clusters busters”, “restructuring”, “models of epidemics”, “cultural perspectives’, “GPs, zoning and GIS”, “smoking”, “accidents & emergencies”, “mortality variations”, “sustaining health”, “health variations in space”, “morbidity variations”, “HIV/AIDS prevention”, “disability and long term care”, and “environmental health”.

Congratulations are due to the local organizers, Fiona Smyth, Sarah Atkinson, Sara Mackian and Richard Thomas and to the many staff and student volunteers of the School of Geography at the University of Manchester who made the symposium so memorable.

Future Meetings Planned

The Chinese Committee of Medical Geography (Chairperson, Professor Wuyi Wang, Vice- Chairperson, Professor Sheng Sheng Gong) will hold its 6th Symposium in Medical Geography in October 2003 in southwest China.

The CHE has invited Dr. Thomas Krafft to organize a pre-conference meeting of the CHE prior to the IGU World Congress in Glasgow to be held in Munich August 2004. In addition to it being useful to the CHE in planning its activities for 2004 to 2008, we believe that such a meeting will enhance participation in Glasgow by giving CHE members the opportunity to present at two meetings and seeing two parts of Europe. It will also be the first CHE pre- conference meeting since the Lisbon regional meeting.

7 Recent Publications Journal Articles

Geojournal Special Section on Urban Health

Dunn, J.R. and Rosenberg, M.W. (2001) “Guest editorial: revealing the spaces of urban health”, Geojournal. Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 107.

Rosenberg, M.W. and Wilson, K. (2001) “Exploring the links between health and housing: the limitations of population health surveys”, Geojournal. Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 109-116.

Ross, N.A., Nobrega, K., and Dunn, J. (2001) “Income segregation, income inequality and mortality in North American metropolitan areas”, Geojournal. Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 117-124.

Eisenhauer, E. (2001) “In poor health: supermarket redlining and urban nutrition”, Geojournal. Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 125-133.

Luginaah, I., Jerret, M., Elliott, S., Eyles, J., Parizeau, K., Birch, S., Abernathy, T., Veenstra, G., Hutchinson, B. and Giovis, C. (2001) “Health profiles of Hamilton: spatial characteristics of neighbourhoods for health investigations”, Geojournal. Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 135-147.

Reader, S. (2001) “Detecting and analyzing clusters of low-birth weight incidence using exploratory spatial data analysis”, Geojournal. Vol. 53, No. 2, pp. 149-159.

* The issue of Geojournal actually appeared in 2002.

Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy – Theme Issue: Contemporary Urban Problems and Population Health

Dunn, J.R. and Rosenberg, M.W. (2002) “Guest editorial – Contemporary urban problems and population health”, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 475-476.

Morello-Frosch, R.A. (2002) “Discrimination and the political economy of environmental inequality”, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 477-496.

Cheer, T., Kearns, R. and Murphy, L. (2002) “Housing policy, poverty and culture: ‘discounting’ decisions among Pacific peoples in Auckland, New Zealand”, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 497-516.

Curtis, S., Cave, B. and Coutts, A. (2002) “Is urban regeneration good for health? Perceptions and theories of the health impacts of urban change”, Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy. Vol. 20, No. 4, pp. 517-534.

8 Other Publications

Krafft, Thomas, Rick Bissell and Mark W. Rosenberg with contributions from P.K. Das, L. Garcia-Castrillo Riesgo, M. Loytonen, T. Kistemann, G. Klein and B. Menne, Health and the Environment. A Crosscutting Issue in Global Change Research. Bonn, Germany: German National Committee on Global Change Research, 2002.

Phillips, David W., Rosenberg, Mark W., and Wilson, Kathleen (2002). "Medical Geography", in Geography edited by Maria Salas in the Encyclopaedia of Life-Support Systems (EOLSS). Oxford: Developed under the auspices of the UNESCO, EOLSS Publishers [http://www.eolss.net].

De Santis, Giovanni M.P. ed. (2002). Geografia Medica. Settimo Seminario Internazionale. Salute e Migrazione. Proceedings of the VII International Seminar in Medical Geography: Health and Migration. Perugia: Rux Editrice.

Members’ News

Frank Barrett has produced a book, Foreign Primary Sources for Medical Geography and Geographical Medicine. It is a 519 page collection of 78 translations from Chinese, Dutch, French, German and Latin sources. Printed between 1782 and 1985 these documents have never been translated into English. As such they are adjunct to his earlier and more important analytical study Disease and Geography: The History of an Idea.

The cost of the professional translation of the documents and the printing of 100 copies resulted in each copy costing Cdn $4348 each! Therefore, Frank has decided to donate the volume to English-speaking universities where medical geography/geography of health or the history of medicine is currently established. For more information about Frank’s book, you should contact him directly:

Frank Barrett Professor Emeritus and Senior Scholar York University, Canada Email: [email protected]

Dr. Harshit Sinha has left the Indian Institute of Management and is now heading an non-profit organisation and consultancy company in Baroda, India specializing in medical geography and GIS applications. Dr. Sinha can be contacted at [email protected].

9 Forthcoming IGU conferences

THE 30th CONGRESS OF THE INTERNATIONAL GEOGRAPHICAL UNION IGC-UK GLASGOW, 15-20 AUGUST 2004

The academic programme and registration details for the IGC-UK Glasgow 2004, the 30th Congress of the International Geographical Union, are available from mid-September 2003.

The Congress programme incorporates the 2004 Annual Conference of the Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers), together with the involvement of a range of other bodies, and the joint international geomorphology conference, 'Geomorphology and Sustainability: Towards a Sustainable Future', organised by the British Geomorphology Research Group, the International Association of Geomorphologists and IGU Commission 'Geomorphology and sustainablity'.

Between the Opening Ceremony on Monday 15 August 2004 and the closing events on Friday 19 August, the 30th Congress programme provides a five-day 'feast and festival' of geography. Excursions - within Glasgow and to other parts of Scotland, to Ireland, and even to Iceland - which will significantly enrich the Congress programme.

The Congress programme is not just structured around a mix of plenary papers and paper sessions - in which many IGU Commissions are collaborating with the research groups of the Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers). Ample space has been reserved for submitted papers not formally associated with the themes identified by Commissions and their partner organisations. And a feature of the 30th Congress is that more innovative and participatory styles for academic sessions are strongly encouraged: panel discussions, shorter papers with discussants, meet-the-author sessions, and so on.

The IGC-UK Glasgow 2004 will be a major international meeting with an outstanding range of academic and associated activities involving many of the world's leading geographical authorities and organisations.

Given its range of activities, it is not only excellent value for money but also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Can you afford not to be there?

Full details on the academic programme, including the excursions, and details on registration, are on the Congress website -www.meetingmakers.co.uk/IGC-UK2004

CAIRNS, AUSTRALIA 2006 REGIONAL CONFERENCE http://www.tesag.jcu .edu.au/IGU/

10 Other IGU News

The IGU Home of Geography Villa Celimontana has launched a book series. Volume I “Human Mobility in a Borderless World” and Volume II “ Food and Environment: Geographies of Taste”. For more information about these books and future books in the series contact Tinia Lines at the Home of Geography, Rome, at e-mail: [email protected]

Websites of Interest

The IGU Commission 13: Health and the Environment: http://geog.queensu.ca/igu-com-he

The IGU: http://www.igu-net.org/

The Home of Geography: http://www.homeofgeography.org/

------Electronic Newsletter In order to switch over to an electronic newsletter we need your current email address. Please fill out the form below:

Name: ______Title: ______Organization:______Preferred Mailing Address (business/home): ______Email address: ______

Either mail it or email it to:

Professor Mark Rosenberg, Chairperson Queen’s University Department of Geography Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6 E-mail: [email protected]

11 If you plan to send the above information by email please insert “H & E email address” in the subject line of your email.

12 IGU COMMISSION ON HEALTH AND THE ENVIRONMENT STEERING COMMITTEE MEMBERS

Professor Mark Rosenberg, Chairperson Professor Anandan Shanmuganadan, Queen’s University Steering Committee Member Department of Geography Department of Geography Kingston, Ontario, Canada, K7L 3N6 Madurai Kamaraj University t. (613) 533-6046 Palkalainagar f. (613) 533-6122 Madurai -625 021 e-mail [email protected] Tamilnadu, India t. +91 (-452) -858257 Dr. Sarah Atkinson, Secretary and Steering f. +91 (-452) -531056 /640707 Committee Member e-mail [email protected] Geography Department Mansfield Cooper Building Dr. Joseph Oppong, Steering Oxford Rd. Committee Member University of Manchester Department of Geography Manchester, M13 9PL University of North Texas United Kingdom 210 Environmental Education t. +44 0161 275 3647 Science and Technology Building f. +44 0161 275 7878 P. O. Box 305279, Denton, TX e-mail [email protected] 76203-5279 USA Dra. Maria Elena Ducci, Steering t. (940) 565-2181 Committee Member f. (940) 369-7550 Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile e-mail [email protected] Instituto de Estudios Urbanos y Territoriales El Comendador 1916, Pedro de Valdivia Professor Svetlana Malkhazova, Norte Steering Committee Member Casilla 16002-Correo 9 Faculty of Geography Santiago de Chile Lomonosov Moscow State Chile University t. 56 -2-3545511 119899, Moscow f. 56 -2 -2328805 Russia e-mail [email protected] t. 7 095 939 2140 f. 7 095 939 2238 e-mail [email protected]

13 Dr. Paula Santana, Steering Committee Dr. Robin Kearns, Steering Member Committee Member Department of Geography School of Geography and University of Coimbra Environmental Science Coimbra, University of Auckland Portugal, 3030 Private Bag 92019, Auckland t. +351 (239) 859967 Aotearoa/New Zealand f. +351 (239) 716851 t. +64 (-9) -373 7599 ext 8442 e-mail [email protected] f. +64 (-9) -373 7434 e-mail [email protected] Professor Elizabeth Thomas-Hope, Steering Committee Member Professor Wuyi Wang, Steering Department of Geography Committee Member University of the West Indies (Mona Chinese Academy of Sciences Campus) Institute of Geographical Sciences Mona, Kingston And Natural Resources Research Jamaica 3 Datun Road t. (876) 927-2129 Beijing 100101 f. (876) 977-6029 China e-mail t. 86-10-64889286 [email protected] f. 86-10-64856504 e-mail [email protected] Ms. Cathy Oelofse, Steering Committee Member Dr. Thomas Krafft, Steering Department of Geography Committee Member University of Natal (Durban) Nationales Komitee für Global Room: 3S09 Change Forschung Memorial Tower Building German National Committee on Durban Global Change Research South Africa Wissenschaftliches Sekretariat / t. +27 (-31) -2601403 Scientific Secretariat f. +27 (-31) -2601391 Department für Geo- und e-mail [email protected] Umweltwissenschaften Sektion Geographie Luisenstraße 37 D-80333 München Germany t. +49 (0) 89 - 21 80 65 92 f. e-mail [email protected] muenchen.de

14 Professor Cosimo Palagiano, Steering Professor Susana Curto, Steering Committee Member Committee Member Dipartimento di Geografia Umana National Council of Science and Università Degli Studi di Roma “La Technological Research (CONICET) Sapienza” Epidemiological Research Center Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia (CIE) of the National Academy of P. Le Aldo Moro Medicine 5-00185 Roma Buenos Aires Italy Argentina t. +39 06 49913917 t. +54 (11) 4 334-3220 f. +39 06 499 13874 f. +54 (11) 4 331-4018 e-mail [email protected] e-mail [email protected]

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