The overriding goal of the geographies of health and health care is to ‘construct
accounts of why place matters’ to these fields (Mohan 2000, 330). Scholarship in
this vibrant area of the discipline of human geography has had a significant impact
on numerous areas of health and health care inquiry more broadly, including our
conceptualization of the social determinants of health and also issues related to the
organization and delivery of health care. However, as Gesler and Kearns (2002,
139) point out: ‘[u]ntil the mid-1990s, geographical analysis of health care …
was often undertaken by examining patterns of service utilization. Furthermore,
the sites of service provision were viewed as locations rather than as contributors
to, and constituents of, health care landscapes.’ More recently there has been a
flourishing of innovative research undertaken by geographers and others that offers
unique insights into how we conceptualize the geographies of health care in a much
broader sense (see Chapter 2), some of which specifically connects to primary
health care (PHC). In this book we showcase this work through interrogating the
landscapes that inform the very nature and principles of PHC and ultimately shape
how this care is both delivered and received.
In this chapter we provide an important