Locational Attributes of Health Behavior

Abstract

(from the chapter) Drawing largely on debates within medical geography and on research examples from the US, Chile, and New Zealand, this chapter outlines the salient points of the nexus between place and health. It begins with the more traditional aspects of the physical environments of health care delivery. Next, it discusses place and space. It concludes by showing how a continuous engagement of the structure-agency question and other aspects of social theory will provide an epistemology in which to investigate the locational attributes of health settings and the health behaviors associated with these attributes. In this chapter, the term "setting" is used to refer to conventional notions of place as well as the psychosocial implications that such places inherently bring to provider-patient encounters. Topics include: locational attributes, quality of care, and health care consumption; institutional and facility aspects of health care delivery; ambulatory care utilization by patients in the US; patterns of hospital utilization in the US; and help seeking behaviors: predicting use of and satisfaction with care. The authors conclude that locational attributes of the health care encounter are related in complex ways to how patients perceive the quality of care. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)