Revisiting the impacts of geographical aspects on public health in the tropical-Asian countries: a review

Public health in an area is influenced by various factors. One of these factors is the environment, which is related to geographical aspects such as climate and topography. This paper evaluates the impact of geographical aspects on public health in tropical Asian countries. This paper is a systematic literature review organized using the PRISMA approach. Search keywords were determined using the PCC method. Documents reviewed in this study were obtained from the Scopus database. There were 1734 documents collected. Of these, 191 were selected through the extraction process and continued in the review. The results of this study show that research in this field has been conducted for 150 years. However, many studies have only been produced in the last two decades. This review provides evidence that geographical aspects affect public health in tropical Asian countries. The climate is an important and widely discussed geographical aspect. Climate-related variables appeared in 84 % of studies, whereas topography and environment appeared in less than 7 %. The remaining articles discuss the application of geography in disease studies and the combination of several variables. This study synthesizes 150 years of evidence to establish a regional theory of geographical aspects-health interactions. Climate is the geographical aspect that has the most influence on disease and public health. This information is essential to strengthen the foundation of medical geography and health geography, especially in Southeast Asia.