Curtis, Sarah. Health and Inequality: Geographical Perspectives.

• Author: Wang, Linda Q.
• Position: Book Review

Curtis, Sarah. Health and Inequality: Geographical Perspectives. London: Sage Publications Ltd., 2004. xiv + 329 pp. Cloth, $99.95; paper, $39.95.

Around fifty percent of the world's population currently lives in cities. In the next few decades, about the same percentage of the population in today's less developed countries will have lived in cities as well. As the world becomes increasingly urbanized, the quality of urban health, health services, and access to health-care resources become pressing issues. Understanding urban health variations and developing viable strategies to ameliorate inequalities in today's highly urbanized and developed societies, therefore, will have invaluable future implications for the currently less developed but rapidly industrializing and urbanizing societies.

Health and Inequality is a valuable and timely publication in this regard. International in scope, Curtis addresses issues of urban health and urban health variations primarily in the more developed countries. Using extensive case studies from around the world, she provides a broad, yet in-depth analysis of the contributing factors to both harmful and healing spaces for health. Anchored on the central thesis that place matters, Curtis argues convincingly from a geographic perspective that the variations and inequalities of health and health services shared by various population groups in cities of the more developed countries could be best understood in places at different geographic scales. Places are investigated as an essential embodiment of the members' power in constructing the different spaces for health and their ability to control and negotiate access to various public health resources. Government policies and professional efforts delegated to ameliorate spatial health variations in cities, therefore, could be more effective by addressing issues of environmental injustice resulting in the cultural, economic, social, and political variations.

Health and Inequality opens with an introduction that highlights the impact of social and cultural variations on perceptions of health, illness, and risks for health at different geographic scales. Curtis proposes that the unique interdisciplinary nature of geographic approach to the study of health, therefore, is ideal in constructing a holistic understanding of the causes of health variations and in developing analytical strategies that address spatial health inequalities. Curtis then organizes the ensuing...