INTERFACE BETWEEN CLIMATOLOGY AND EPIDEMIOLOGY

A GEOGRAPHICAL APPROACH

Abstract

The relations established between climate and health are numerous and have come a long way since antiquity. Climatology and epidemiology have close historical ties which have become increasingly close to each other along their evolutionary lines due to currently environmental problems that produce impact on the human health. This paper mainly aims to bring some considerations upon the interfaces of these two areas of knowledge, focusing on methods and techniques common in studies of interdisciplinary character. The climate and health binomial is of great particular interest of numerous professionals involving discussions of inter and multidisciplinary nature. The space in the context of this theme represents an important category of analysis, being designed as a historical contingency of the social reproduction process, generating the need for economic and social organization of a particular spatial planning. In Geography, space is physical, is economical, political, and there is, therefore, no way of thinking man abstracting of this category. Within the framework of epidemiological studies, the space has been considered under different approaches, beyond the mere identification of causal factors, involving increasingly, the establishment of the environmental and social context in which the health phenomena are processed. In short, the issues presented here are directly associated with the existing gap in the increasingly globalised world and at the same time committed to the society-nature relationship.