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Environnement, Risques & Santé

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Epidemiology and geography: A promising interdisciplinary approach to analysis of the relations between health and the environment Volume 4, issue 6, Novembre-Décembre 2005

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Unité mixte de recherche (UMR) Prodig, 15, rue Casimir-Brenier, 38000 Grenoble, École de santé publique de l’université libre de Bruxelles, Route de Lennik 808, CP 596, 1070 Bruxelles, Belgique

Since the middle of the 20th century, epidemiology has focused on the factors that determine the health of populations and has to that end developed partnerships with the social sciences, mainly sociology. On the other hand, joint research in geography and epidemiology remains limited, even though the inseparable links between health and the environment should promote exchanges between these sciences, which both rely on physical and social data. These two disciplines have developed similarly and share the same objectives: both study the distribution of phenomena and are paying increasing attention to environmental risks. This article suggests an epistemological and methodological approach to the respective positions of geography and epidemiology as they attempt to understand the emergence of health problems on a population scale. The geographic approach, which is not limited to cartographic techniques, helps to renew the models of reciprocal causalities that social epidemiology have developed to identify the determining factors in populations’ health.