Human Geography Commons^™

Five Corridors: A Community Health Needs Assessment Of Horry County, Stephen Borders, Hayley Bilko, Molly Craig, Olivia Guthrie, Ashley Mcconnell, Emily Mcgowan, Anna Quick, Abigail Rike, Makayla Wilson

Public Health

This report presents a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) of Horry County, South Carolina. Its central analytical contribution is a five-corridor framework derived from k-means cluster analysis of the county's 76 residential census tracts, drawing on social and economic indicators from the American Community Survey and health estimates from the CDC PLACES program. The analysis organizes the county into five distinct community types — Affluent Coastal Retirement, Moderate Coastal Retirement, Inland Rural/Suburban Transitional, Concentrated Disadvantage, and Hispanic Hospitality Worker — each with a characteristic profile of social and health conditions.

Within this framework, the assessment examines a range of social …

Beyond "Place Matters": Making Spatial Analysis Accessible With Dashboard-Driven Geography, Stephen Borders

Public Health

This article presents an instructional module that uses Tableau to teach spatial thinking and policy geography through an analysis of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participation. Tableau’s ability to integrate custom spatial files with demographic and health data makes it an accessible platform for introducing geographic inquiry without requiring specialized GIS expertise. The lesson guides instructors through building maps, bullet charts, and scatterplots that highlight gaps between eligibility and enrolment, while connecting food insecurity to health outcomes. By lowering technical barriers, Tableau provides a pedagogical bridge that helps educators foster spatial literacy in diverse classroom contexts.

This article was published …

Exploring Early Childhood Development Programming In Kenya’S Arid And Semi-Arid Lands, Phyllis Magoma, Amina Abubakar, Martha Kaniala, Barack Aoko, Moses Wesala, Joyce Marangu, Susan Nyamanya, Margaret Kabue, Anil Khamis, Esther Chongwo

Institute for Human Development, East Africa

Background: Promoting high-quality early childhood development (ECD) is vital for individuals’ physical and social well-being and yields significant societal returns. However, children in marginalised regions like Kenya’s arid and semi-arid lands (ASALs) face significant barriers to accessing quality ECD services.

Aim: This study aimed to document existing ECD services in Kenya’s ASAL areas, including their availability, types and key characteristics; identify gaps in their provision and propose solutions to enhance access and quality. Setting: This qualitative study was conducted in 10 ASAL counties in Kenya.

Methods: Using purposive and snowball sampling techniques, 103 key informants, including pre-primary …

Ecological Grief Among Farmers And Pastoralists In Ethiopia And Kenya, Syed Shabab Wahid, Christine Musyimi, Benjamin Oestericher, Linda Khakali, Lauren Carruth, Emily Mendenhall, Edna Bosire

Brain and Mind Institute

Climate change is a major cause of mental distress worldwide. In many ways, climate change has become a chronic disaster, while in other ways each acute event can accumulate and present challenges within and between communities. A growing body of evidence indicates that a changing climate can precipitate a cluster of negative affective states scholars call “ecological grief.” Ecological grief reflects psychological responses to climate changes and destruction of nature, species, culturally significant or sacred spaces. Until now, ecological grief has been conceptualized as a psychological response connected primarily to the destruction of the natural environment, and has not fully …

Field Journal: The Excluded Middle, Carrie E. Kouts

Masters Theses

What does it look like to engage with organisms and landscapes at the periphery of anthropocentric value structures? How does one break the internalized myth that the “built” environment is excluded from the natural world? When does a hyper-mobile and hyper-commodified society confront the exponential crisis of animal death? Within this series of journal entries, field notes, collection observations, weird prose, and sensory musings, one will find questions on the nature of being human and the complex narratives of care we encounter in a world shared with more-than-humans. Each handwritten vignette and photograph from daily life weaves a non-linear and …

Framing The Future: A Community Health Analysis Of The Pee Dee Region, Stephen Borders, Jean Anton, Rian Fontaine, Donielle Phillips, Treyton Ringer, Jessica Robinson, Caitlin Thompkins

Public Health

This report presents a comprehensive, data-driven analysis of community health across South Carolina’s Pee Dee region, encompassing Florence, Darlington, Chesterfield, Marlboro, Marion, and Dillon Counties. Using tract-level data from CDC PLACES, the U.S. Census, and the National Provider Identifier registry, it assesses chronic health conditions, health behaviors, and social determinants of health. The analysis incorporates the South Carolina Healthy Communities Index (SCHCI) and a Suitability Analysis to identify the region’s most disadvantaged communities. The findings highlight persistent disparities, particularly in rural counties, where high rates of poverty, chronic disease, and unmet basic needs intersect with limited access to care. Despite …

Heartache In The Heartland: Unraveling The Social Roots Of Deaths Of Despair In Kentucky, Lyndsey K. Blair, Madeline M. Tomlinson, Michele Abee-Biskis, Jessica Hume, Gabri Warren

Journal of Appalachian Health

Introduction: Deaths of despair (DoD), encompassing suicides, drug overdoses, and alcohol-related liver diseases, have emerged as a critical public health crisis in the United States, with their rise particularly pronounced from 1995 to 2013 and exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Kentucky, grappling with high rates of substance use disorder, poor mental health, and economic hardship, is at the forefront of this issue, particularly in its rural and Appalachian regions.

Purpose: This study explores the social determinants contributing to DoD in Kentucky, focusing on economic and social factors that influence rising rates of suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol-related liver disease. The …

Frontier Healthscapes: Competing Narratives Of Disease, Environment, And Wellbeing In Early Minnesota, Aidan Reynolds

Geography Honors Projects

Across settler societies, health narratives were shaped by evolving tensions between lay and expert knowledge, frameworks of disease causation, and perceptions of the environment as both a source of health and a threat. In the decades following Euro-American settlement (1860-1900), Minnesota became a focal point for these debates, with its landscape fostering complex and competing narratives on health, wellbeing, and disease. This paper explores how public health discourse developed in Minnesota through the perspectives of institutions, the public, and economic interests. Combining environmental history with critical discourse analysis of archival materials, this study examines shifts within the Minnesota State Board …

“I Had To Go There For My Own Safety” Negotiations Of Access And Autonomy Among Dc Birth Settings, Elizabeth Avery Borgmann

Geography Undergraduate Senior Theses

Childbirth experiences are shaped by spatial context. This study considers the relationships between access to, selection of, and experiences with labor and delivery care among Black birthing people in Washington, DC. Informed by Reproductive Justice and reproductive geographies frameworks, I employ a mixed methods GIS design that integrates mapping of potential spatial access with qualitative analysis of community members’ lived experiences. On the quantitative side, nearest-neighbor and 2-step floating catchment area analyses reveal an east-west gradient of potential spatial access to labor and delivery wards, with low access concentrated in predominantly Black and low-income census tracts of Wards 5, 7, …

Mapping Accessibility To Emergency Care Using Public Transportation, Bach Tran

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Intro: Public transit offers various advantages for both communities and individuals in terms of mobility and has the potential to serve as a practical alternative to private motorized transportation. Timely and convenient public transit becomes a lifeline for people who cannot access other types of transportation, especially when it comes to emergency care. Method: We built a private network analysis within ArcGIS Pro using coordinate data from hospitals and stand-alone emergency rooms as designated by the North American Industrial Classification System (NAICS) and public transit data from Orlando, FL. Establishing the accessible time as 30 minutes, we computed and visualized …

The Association Between Criminal Defendants And Health In Kalamazoo County (2012-2016), Ernest Baffour Tweneboa

Masters Theses

Addressing exposure to criminal defendants as a public health issue is crucial to achieving health equity. The presence of criminal defendants has been linked to adverse health behaviors or outcomes that might be associated with anxiety, depression, and negative coping mechanisms. However, crime as a social variable has been understudied. This study therefore seeks to find the association between crime-related stressors and adverse health effects within Kalamazoo County (a mid-sized county with a population of about 250,000) between 2012 and 2016. The methods employed include geocoding of defendant addresses and mapping of defendant rates aggregated at the tract level using …

Complexities Of Health And Care Worker Migration Pathways And Corresponding International Reporting Requirements, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ivy Bourgeault, Denise Spitzer

Global Nurse Migration Pathways: A Comparative Project

The increasing complexity of the migration pathways of health and care workers is a critical consideration in the reporting requirements of international agreements designed to address their impacts. There are inherent challenges across these different agreements including reporting functions that are misaligned across different data collection tools, variable capacity of country respondents, and a lack of transparency or accountability in the reporting process. Moreover, reporting processes often neglect to recognize the broader intersectional gendered and racialized political economy of health and care worker migration. We argue for a more coordinated approach to the various international reporting requirements and processes that …

The Future Of Health Care Work And The Place Of Migrant Workers Within It: Internationally Educated Nurses In Ontario Canada During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Margaret Walton-Roberts

Global Nurse Migration Pathways: A Comparative Project

The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of immigrant health workers in OECD nations, and intensified debates about the current and future supply and distribution of such workers, particularly nurses. This review paper considers internationally educated nurses in the case of Ontario, Canada, and the policy responses developed during the pandemic to address the increased utilization of immigrant health workers. To further consider the evolving place of migrant workers within health, the broader issue of the future of health care work is examined to imagine what a sustainable and resilient health workforce agenda that integrates internationally educated nurses might look like.

A Multi-Method Exploration Of Health Disparities And Covid-19 Incidence And Mortality In The United States, S M Asger Ali

Theses and Dissertations

The 21^st century experienced several health crises, especially in the form of infectious disease outbreaks such as the SARS outbreak in 2003, the H1N1 in 2009, and Ebola outbreaks in 2013. However, none has produced a worldwide socio-economic and health impact compared to the recent pandemic, known as COVID-19. As of October 4, 2022, more than 614 million cases with 6 million deaths have been reported worldwide. The United States is currently in the leading position with more than 98 million cases and 1 million deaths. The pandemic, however, did not impact the entire region similarly, and the infections …

Gis Automated Delineation And Analysis Of Cancer Service Areas In The United States, Changzhen Wang

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Delineating a meaningful and reliable geographic unit pertaining to cancer care is essential in examining geographic variations in cancer care for better analysis, management, and planning. Public health researchers have devoted great efforts to defining various service areas, which; however, lack scientific rigor or are unrepresentative of the highly specialized cancer care markets, and their methods have become obsolete in the era of big data and high geo-computation. This study develops the “Spatially Constrained Leiden (ScLeiden)” method, a network community detection algorithm in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), and applies it to delineate a series of coherent cancer service …

Rural Resiliency: The Cause And Effect Of Minnesota's Maternal Health Crisis, Annabel Traudie Gregg

Geography Honors Projects

The United States is experiencing a maternal health crisis that disproportionately affects those who give birth in rural communities. Rural birthing people have higher maternal mortality rates, increased risk of postpartum hemorrhage, non-indicated cesarean sections, and other adverse health outcomes. Despite the enhanced risks of rural birth, rural communities are losing access to hospital-based obstetric care at an unprecedented rate. Minnesota has vast rural territory, with one-fourth of its population living outside the urban sphere ­– making it a strategic area of study. As of July, 2021, 31% of Minnesota’s 91 rural hospitals were at risk of closing. The repercussions …

Geography Of Covid-19 Waves In Georgia, Walker Tompkins

Symposium of Student Scholars

Geography of COVID-19 Waves in Georgia

Over the past 2 years everyone on the globe’s lives have been changed drastically after the COVID-19 virus spread across the world. This united and divided us more than any other event in most of our lifetimes. The pandemic everyone and now that there are two years of data, it is important to examine impacts at various geographic scales. As such, focusing on the state of Georgia, this project explores how the different variants, public policy, and vaccination of our population has changed the trajectory of the virus and how many deaths it has …

Geographic Determinants Of Colorectal Cancer In Louisiana, Denise Danos, Claudia Leonardi, Xiao Cheng Wu

School of Public Health Faculty Publications

Purpose: Currently, rural residents in the United States (US) experience a greater cancer burden for tobacco-related cancers and cancers that can be prevented by screening. We aim to characterize geographic determinants of colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence in Louisiana due to rural residence and other known geographic risk factors, area socioeconomic status (SES), and cultural region (Acadian or French-speaking). Methods: Primary colorectal cancer diagnosed among adults 30 years and older in 2008–2017 were obtained from the Louisiana Tumor Registry. Population and social and economic data were obtained from US Census American Community Survey. Rural areas were defined using US Department of …

Environmental Racism In Baltimore: A Geographical Study Into The Connections Between Environmental Toxins And Public Health, Genevieve Block

Honors Theses

An investigation into the relationship between environmental toxins and environmental racism in Baltimore City, Maryland.

Diary Of An Afghan Woman Collection - September 2021

TSOS Interview Gallery

Four women share with us their daily lives in Afghanistan. Join them as they express their love for the country, the people, and each other; and as they share with you their deepest fears and most intimate moments.

They refuse to be silenced as they journey through this new, uncharted chapter in Afghanistan's history.

We at TSOS are honored to provide a platform for their voices to be heard. We will post entries as we receive them. For safety purposes, names have been changed and only avatars (designed with input from each woman) will be used.

ZOYA

Zoya is a …

Yosuf, Yosuf, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Yosef and his family of four are from the Herat Province in Afghanistan. The eldest child used to sell potatoes with Ibrahim, the middle child, who was killed by a landmine planted by counter-revolutionaries. As a result, the eldest child, Ismail, developed severe nerve and mental issues, and the wife, who is now pregnant, frequently has seizures. They sold their home to treat Ismail, but doctors say nothing can be done. Ismail’s condition continues to worsen, but he refuses to leave to see a doctor because he is afraid of the police for an unknown reason. Yosef says he is …

Lisa Campbell, Lisa Campbell, Tsos

TSOS Interview Gallery

Lisa Campbell, project manager for the non-profit Do Your Part Refugee Community Center in Greece. Lisa combined efforts with multiple organizations to better the lives of refugees in the Delisi, Greece area. Lisa discusses the evolution of the growing refugee crisis and the millions who flee to Greece and Turkey.

Evaluating Urban Parks Accessibility And Equity: A Case Study Of Hartford, Ct And New Haven, Ct, Natalie Roach, Mara Tu

Honors Scholar Theses

Public parks provide cities with environmental benefits, positive health effects, recreational opportunities, community building, educational spaces, and public amenities. However, certain populations have been systematically denied their fair share of these benefits because of unjust practices in the creation and maintenance of urban parks. With a lens of environmental justice, the goal of this research was to assess park quality and accessibility of two Connecticut cities, Hartford and New Haven, by gathering publicly available information as well as using GIS tools.

The Trust for Public Land (TPL) has an existing ParkScore rating system that evaluates the quality of a city’s …

Socastee Interview, Participant #16, April 29, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Socastee Interview, Participant #12, April 15, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Socastee Interview, Participant #13, April 14, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Socastee Interview, Participant #07, April 12, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by CCU students.

Socastee Interview, Participant #11, April 8, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Socastee Interview, Participant #02, April 2, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.

Socastee Interview, Participant #08, March 31, 2021, Jennifer Mokos, Jaime Mccauley

Flood Survivor Interviews

A community member of the Rosewood neighborhood in Socastee is interviewed by a CCU student.