Slums, Space, and State of Health—A Link between Settlement Morphology and Health Data

John Friesen, Victoria Friesen, Ingo Dietrich and Peter F. Pelz
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John Friesen: Chair of Fluid Systems, Technical University of Darmstadt, Otto-Berndt-Str. 2, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany
Victoria Friesen: Klinikum Darmstadt, Grafenstraße 9, 64283 Darmstadt, Germany
Ingo Dietrich: Chair of Fluid Systems, Technical University of Darmstadt, Otto-Berndt-Str. 2, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany
Peter F. Pelz: Chair of Fluid Systems, Technical University of Darmstadt, Otto-Berndt-Str. 2, 64287 Darmstadt, Germany

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 6, 1-28

Abstract: Approximately 1 billion slum dwellers worldwide are exposed to increased health risks due to their spatial environment. Recent studies have therefore called for the spatial environment to be introduced as a separate dimension in medical studies. Hence, this study investigates how and on which spatial scale relationships between the settlement morphology and the health status of the inhabitants can be identified. To this end, we summarize the current literature on the identification of slums from a geographical perspective and review the current literature on slums and health of the last five years (376 studies) focusing on the considered scales in the studies. We show that the majority of medical studies are restricted to certain geographical regions. It is desirable that the number of studies be adapted to the number of the respective population. On the basis of these studies, we develop a framework to investigate the relationship between space and health. Finally, we apply our methodology to investigate the relationship between the prevalence of slums and different health metrics using data of the global burden of diseases for different prefectures in Brazil on a subnational level.

Keywords: slums; informal settlements; remote sensing; global burden; health data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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