Abstract

BARCELLOS, Christovam de Castro; SABROZA, Paulo Chagastelles; PEITER, Paulo  and  ROJAS, Luisa Iñiguez. Spatial organization, health and quality of life: use of spatial analysis and indicators in health situation analysis. Inf. Epidemiol. Sus [online]. 2002, vol.11, n.3, pp.129-138. ISSN 0104-1673.  http://dx.doi.org/10.5123/S0104-16732002000300003.

Space is a synthetic and convergent category in which the processes involved in the quality of life, environment and health conditions of populations are expressed. Through these processes, the results obtained by the analysis of indicators are sensitive to the choice of indicators, information sources, scale of analysis, spatial reference units and methods of spatial analysis. The objective of this work is to define the role of spatial analysis in the health situation assessment, which includes the description of the epidemiological profiles, quality of life and environmental conditions. The first step for characterizing the health situation is to describe the structure and spatial dynamics of the population. Spatial analysis permits the planning of control actions and resource allocation as it allows to describe and understand the social and enviromental processes in which health events occur.

Keywords : Spatial Analysis; Environment; Health Situation Analysis; Health Indicators.

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