Coming out: exposing social theory in medical geography

The debate about the role of theory in human geography has now spanned two decades. This debate has largely bypassed medial geography which has remained, with one or two exceptions, largely atheoretical. This, we argue, is merely an appearance because no social science is atheoretical when theory is understood as a way of understanding the world. The aim of this paper is to present the three broad groups of theory which can be found (explicitly and implicitly) in medical geography. In addition to presenting the basic concepts of these theories, how they are used within health-related research and medical geography in particular is also explored. The paper concludes by presenting a conceptual framework to illustrate how medical geography can develop in order to meet one of its newest challenges—theory generation.