Estonia’s health geography: West versus east – an ethnic approach

The purpose with this essay is to explore the social changes in relation to changes in mortality for the two largest ethnic groups in Estonia; ethnic Estonians and the Russian minority. Since this is a geographical essay, my purpose is also to explore these changes in relation to the country’s internal geography. As these changes appear over time in space, the content is partly rooted in a time geographical point of view. It is also rooted in a regional geographical point of view, since I have been comparing the mentioned changes between different areas in Estonia (with considerations on developments abroad).Two different development lines can be seen as a consequence of the social changes taking place in the 1990s. While the ethnic Estonians situation has improved, the Russian minority’s situation has instead declined regarding to social existence and health. As a result the mortality has increased enormously for the Russian minority. The ethnic Estonians had also a mortality increase in practically all studied causes of death in all studied areas, but this increase wasn’t as high as for the Russian minority…

Contents

1. Introduction
1.2. Aim and framing of questions
1.3. Disposition
1.4. Methodological problems and limitations
1.5. Method and sources
2. Medical geography – a subject introduction
2.1. Critics of Medical geography
2.2. Human action as a central cause
2.3. Mobility and spreading sources – the spreading of diseases
2.4. Health and awareness of health
3. Estonia – a country of differentiation
3.1. Estonia’s history of modern time
3.1.1. The first period – Estonia as a new independent state
3.1.2. The second period – the Estonian SSR
3.1.3. The third period – the Estonian Republic, once again
3.2. The ethnic population structures
3.3. Russians as Estonia’s largest minority group
3.4. The Russian presence – a cause to an un-equal social structure of today
4. Estonia’s medical geography
4.1. Regarding the social and ethnic structures
4.2. Methods and considerations when calculating and comparing the data
4.3 Estonia in whole – non medical variables
4.3.1. Medical variables – Mortality trends
4.3.2. Conclusions of the mortality trends – the country as whole
4.4. Ida-Virumaa – non medical variables
4.4.1. Medical variables – Mortality trends
4.4.2. Conclusions of the mortality trends – Ida-Virumaa
4.5. Läänemaa – non medical variables
4.5.1. Läänemaa – medical variables
4.5.2. Conclusions of the mortality trends – Läänemaa
5. Discussion
6. Conclusions
List of references
Appendix 1

Author: Agnarson, Lars

Source: Sodertorn University

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