Blog: Place Within Populations

Blog -- Place Within Populations

How individual and community social behaviors and responses to the physical environment alter, disrupt, impair and/or damage the ability of human physiology to fight infectious diseases. The following concepts will be explored: drug resistant microorganisms, herd immunity, and re-emergence of vaccine preventable diseases, genetic susceptibility of some populations.

The idea that individual and social responses to the environment can impact human health, particularly with regard to the ability to fight off infectious disease is not new. As far back as the 1800s when John Snow connected an epidemic of cholera to sewage in the Broad Street pump, epidemiologists (as they are now known) have been making connections between behavior, environment, and disease. Some variables influence public health through policy rather than through medical practice. The public health system has labeled phenomena such as these social determinants of health (SDH). The World...
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