Journal of Maps

Mapping of Health and Wellbeing

Place and health are intrinsically and inseparably interconnected, which gives maps and geovisualisations a wonderful and unique power to help us better understand the spatial distribution of diseases and health services, analyse their spatial patterns, and give us insights on associations between health and wellbeing (outcomes) and factors of built, natural, and social environments that may contribute to them.

The environment where people live, work and play not only shapes how diseases are spread or health services are delivered, but can also influence people's physical and mental health and wellbeing. That is why health mapping is crucial in enhancing our understanding of geospatial patterns in public health, epidemiology, and health geography. The topic encompasses a wide range of applications, from tracking and surveillance of infectious diseases through evaluating access to healthcare and identifying health inequities, to advanced spatial modelling of individual- or community-level health-related issues.

As cartographers often say, a map is worth a thousand words. Health maps provide powerful visual tools for exploration and, even more importantly, communication of health-related issues and relationships between health outcomes and their possible underlying factors. While they serve the scientific community well, they also aid the understanding and engagement of both policymakers and the public. Health mapping enables revealing critical insights and comparisons through location, geospatial patterns, and combination of topical layers, that is intuitive to people regardless of their background and interests. We can see this in the iconic example of John Snow’s cholera map, as well as in growing interest in access to informative maps and map dashboards during the recent pandemic.

This will be the first Article Collection in Journal of Maps to focus on ‘Health Mapping’ and we are excited to invite submissions to the Journal on a wide range of health mapping topics, including:

• Environmental and planetary health
• Demographic perspectives
• Disease mapping
• Mental health and wellbeing
• Quality of life
• Mobility and Health
• Creative and qualitative health mapping
• Broader public health issues
• Indigenous health mapping
• Health inequities
• Environmental and social determinants
• Urban and rural health
• Health risks
• Health services accessibility and delivery
• Spatial and spatiotemporal epidemiology
• Spatial modelling of health outcomes

Article Collection Guest Advisors:

Lukas Marek's research is driven by the idea that combining (health) geography and data science can advise public health interventions. As a member of Te Taiwhenua o te Hauora | GeoHealth Laboratory (UC), he studies how physical and social environments where people live affect their health and wellbeing by applying advanced computational methods and statistical tools to analyse and interpret a range of traditional and spatial datasets, often including large datasets consisting of detailed individual-level records.  Lukas enjoys creating clear and effective data visualisations and maps to help inform decision-making and increase public understanding of complex findings.

Hyesop Shin is a quantitative geographer whose interest lies in environmental hazards, urban air quality, mobility for the paediatric groups, and urban traffic. He specialises in agent-based modelling and its applications in geospatial analysis, particularly for understanding complex interactions between human behaviour, environmental conditions, and infrastructure. His work contributes to evidence-based solutions for sustainable and equitable urban planning.

Jesse Whitehead is an impact- and equity-focused health geographer and demographer. His work takes a collaborative approach to cutting-edge health equity, well-being, critical geography, and population research both in Aotearoa NZ and internationally. This produces both innovative knowledge and novel methodological and conceptual approaches. His work falls into three intersecting and overlapping themes that have positive impacts for people at their heart: rural health and healthy equity; geospatial methods and service accessibility; and demography and data.

Further information:

­­All manuscripts submitted to this Article Collection will undergo a full peer-review; the Guest Advisors for this Collection will not be handling the manuscripts.

Please review the journal scope and author submission instructions prior to submitting a manuscript.

The deadline for submitting manuscripts is 30 June 2026.

Please contact Commissioning Editor Alex Johnson at [email protected] with any queries and discount codes regarding this Article Collection.

Please be sure to select the appropriate Article Collection from the drop-down menu in the submission system.

Please select Social Science from the list of available sections during submission. Failure to select the appropriate Article Collection or Section name can result in delays.

The Guest Advisors for this Article Collection have declared no conflicts of interest.

Article Collection key terms:

1. Mapping of (Physical and Mental) Health Outcomes
2. Place and Health
3. Geospatial patterns
4. Environmental and Socioeconomic Determinants of Health
5. Accessibility and delivery of health services