Place and Healthcare
Throughout the course so far, I have developed a much greater understanding of how place can impact people and how place matters. I still believe that where people come from is not a tell-all of who they will become in their future life, but rather, place gives people a jumping off point from which they can grow and become their own person. In this regard, while place does give influence, I would not say that it is the primary variable that matters. Having said that, I am now much more able to comprehend how place can impact us in different ways.
Place can play a great role in culture and worldview. I found that, when we were sharing where we came from as a class, that some people have a personality that bodes well with the neighborhood that they came from. Similarly, with Rosalba’s activity regarding the prices and sizes of housing in Oxnard, it is easy to see how even within a relatively small area there can be a great deal of variation in the community demographics. One house was located in La Colonia, which is historically Latino/a ethnicially, while the other was only a short distance away in a much wealthier beach neighborhood of Oxnard. It used to be difficult for me to think of such great variety in place on such a small small scale, believing that cities were mostly homogenous in their ethnic and financial demographics. This was also shown in our work with the Social Explorer system in how between census tracts that are immediately adjacent to one another there can be variance in the percentage of low income families or of ethnic diversity.
We have also discussed how place can influence health, which does fall into my area of study. In the video comparing the neighborhoods of High Point and Richmond, we could see a great deal of difference by the time High Point was renovated. High Point incorporated sidewalks and community gardens, as well as parks, all of which promote healthy living and safety in the community. Richmond, however, is a food desert. Its residents do not have access to grocery stores that supply healthy and fresh food; in turn, they wind up consuming primarily fast food or other snack foods from convenience and liquor stores. The limited amount of fresh food that they do have access to is often out of their price range due to the “poverty tax” that puts a premium on these goods. This is the sort of thing that, because of where I grew up, I never had to worry about, since the closest grocery store was never any further than a mile away.
The first article that I chose to analyze focuses less on treating place as a cause, and instead treats place as a result of other socio-demographic factors. The article examines place of death across Switzerland, particularly in regards to whether the elderly move to a nursing home prior to time of death or whether they die at home. Some of the factors contributing to home deaths were socio-economic position (SEP) and number of children, as it was predicted that those with a higher SEP were more likely to be in better general health and thus not be admitted to hospitals or nursing homes, and those with children had more family members to take care of them and did not require as much attention from a nursing staff (Hedinger et. al 7-8). I found this article interesting primarily in its treatment of place as the dependent rather than independent variable, which parallels my individual perspective on the relationship between people and place. In regards to my discipline, since I plan on working with the elder population, gaining knowledge of the reasons older individuals seek care in a nursing home or hospital is extremely significant to my field of study.
My second article of choice examines the relationship between place of residence and stroke hospitalization and death, particularly across the state of Florida. The team used ArcGIS software in order to link the data regarding mortality and hospitalization rates to the individual county geographic data that they received from the US Census Bureau (Robertson et. al 3). In their results, it was found that while there was no significant evidence of risk of hospitalization for stroke based on place, there was a much greater risk of stroke mortality in the northern part of the state. Based on the demographics for this region, there is a possibility that the cause of the greater mortality rate lies in the fact that northern Florida is much more rural than southern Florida. Part of the issue could be lack of timely emergency care in these areas (Robertson et. al 7-8). This study particularly increased my confidence in the idea that within my discipline it is possible to study spatial discrepancies between less populated areas and their overall access to proper health care and facilities.
Throughout our time in University 298, I have found that location can extraordinarily crucial in the examination of health care, whether it be because of an environmental factor affecting the quality of life of residents in a particular city, or whether it be because of lack of access to basic necessities for healthy living such as fresh food or hospitals. I am now confident in my abilities to apply what we have been practicing in class with the Social Explorer data, as well the techniques that I have been learning in my Social Statistics course in order to produce an individual research project to present at SAGE this May.
Works Cited
Hedinger, Damian, Julia Braun, Ueli Zellweger, Vladimir Kaplan, and Matthias Bopp. “Moving to and Dying in a Nursing Home Depends Not Only on Health- An Analysis of Socio-Demographic Determinants of Place of Death in Switzerland.” PLoS ONE 9.11 (2014). Web.
Roberson, Shamarial, Matthew Dutton, Megan Macdonald, and Agricola Odoi. “Does Place of Residence or Time of Year Affect the Risk of Stroke Hospitalization and Death? A Descriptive Spatial and Temporal Epidemiologic Study.” PLoS ONE 11.1 (2016). Web.
