Dr. Jody F. Decker, Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Jody s research agenda focuses on the geographies of health, disease, illness and place, in both historical and contemporary contexts, and using cross-cultural and gendered perspectives.
Jody Decker pursued a career in academia after having worked for twenty years in emergency and intensive care nursing. She taught postgraduate cardiology and physiology for years in the Toronto region and then completed a PhD in geography from York University in 1989 and a postdoctoral fellowship in medical geography from Queen s University in 1992. Since that time, she has explored the impact of infectious diseases on Native groups in Canada (and is completing a book on that subject), demographic impacts of illness and disease in general, and public health issues in the 19 th and 20 th centuries.
Jody has had recent experience in CIDA-funded projects in China on gender, health and development, women s health issues and environmental pollution, and health impact assessment studies. Her most recent contemporary work has focused on the theoretical concepts of health, illness and disease, transborder health issues, ‘hot-spot’ transmission studies for microbes in university settings, and cultural heritage landscape studies.
Jody may be contacted at jdecker@wlu.ca.
More information may be found on her departmental faculty page.
Updated: February 2009
Health and Medical Geography 