Robin A Kearns
Biographic Data
| ID | 201581 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Robin A Kearns |
| GIVEN NAMES | Robin A |
| FAMILY NAME | Kearns |
| SIGNATURE | KEARNS R A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Department of Geography, The University of Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland, New Zealand |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 76 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1685 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 76 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| H-INDEX | 23 |
Geographies of the public library
Public libraries are increasingly recognised in popular discourse as key sites within urban space. They are implicated in encompassing projects of civic investment and abandonment, education and memorial, as well as providing specific settings for the unfolding of everyday life. However, despite their clear geographical dimensions, geographers have only taken a sporadic interest in public libraries. By taking stock of existing geographical resear…
Permeable boundaries? Patient perspectives on space and time in general practice waiting rooms
The "healthy dose" of nature
Growing cross-disciplinary interest in understanding if, how, and why time spent with nature can contribute to human health and well-being has recently prompted efforts to identify an ideal healthy dose of nature; exposure to a specific type of nature at a specified frequency and duration. These efforts build on longstanding attempts to prescribe nature in some way, most recently in the form of so-called "green prescriptions." In this critical di…
New Zealand children's health stamps
Older adults’ experiences of home maintenance issues and opportunities to maintain ageing in place
This paper addresses the question of how older adults’ experiences of home maintenance issues shape their opportunities to maintain ageing in place. We explore this question through a case study of ageing in place on Waiheke Island, near Auckland, New Zealand. We draw on in-depth interviews with 28 older adults aged 65 to 94, as well as participatory photo elicitation interviews and research journals conducted with 11 of these participants. We ar…
Reprint of
Associations between the neighbourhood built environment and out of school physical activity and active travel
This study's aim was to examine selected objectively-measured and child specific built environment attributes in relation to proportion of out-of-school time spent in moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (%MVPA) and active travel in a group of ethnically and socio-economically diverse children (n=236) living in Auckland, New Zealand. Street connectivity and distance to school were related to the proportion of trips made by active modes. Ratio o…
The place of receptionists in access to primary care
What constitutes a ‘trip’? Examining child journey attributes using GPS and self-report
Active travel is associated with improved health and development outcomes in children. Accurate detection of children's travel behaviors and routes, however, is problematic. Travel diaries are often used to collect information on children's travel behaviors, yet no evidence for the accuracy of this methodology exists. This study investigated the validity of children's self-reported trips (origin, destination) compared with an objective criterion …
A healthy island blue space
The health in “life's infinite doings”
Neoliberalism and the contract state
Concern for the creep of surveillance and control into the everyday lives of citizens has revived contemporary debates over the politics of health promotion. We examined how political changes have impacted on the work of health promoters through qualitative research with individuals working in the health promotion sector. Interviews and focus groups were undertaken between January 2008 and March 2009. Caught in a neoliberally influenced drive to …
Seasonal and locational variations in children's play
Association of neighbourhood residence and preferences with the built environment, work-related travel behaviours, and health implications for employed adults
Kids in the city study
This study is one of the first internationally to examine the association of specific urban design attributes with child independent mobility. Using robust, appropriate, and best practice objective measures, this study provides robust epidemiological information regarding the relationships between the built environment and health outcomes for this population
Community capacity building in practice
Community capacity building (CCB) is held up as a benchmark for sustainable health promotion, reflecting the empowering discourse of the Ottawa Charter (WHO 1986). In light of concerns that this language may be that of the presiding bureaucratic elite rather than the realities of those working directly with communities (Laverack & Labonte 2000), we question whether CCB reflects the work of New Zealand health promoters. The aim of this study is to…
The Tertiary Turn
Activists often strategically negotiate sectoral boundaries by switching between public, private and voluntary sectors over the life course in order to pursue their aims. This paper draws on a cross-national study that explored the extent of this inter-sectoral movement and the specific “career pathways” activists developed in relation to governmental, private and voluntary/community sector organisations. Using an analysis of 46 biographical narr…
Entitlements to health care
Cool aid? Health, wellbeing and place in the work of Bono and U2
Can Virtual Streetscape Audits Reliably Replace Physical Streetscape Audits
Understanding the Relationship between Activity and Neighbourhoods (Urban) Study
The URBAN Study is applying a novel scientifically robust research design to provide urgently needed epidemiological information regarding the associations between the built environment and health outcomes. The findings will contribute to a larger, international initiative in which similar neighborhood selection and PA measurement procedures are utilized across eight countries. Accordingly, this study directly addresses the international priority…
Seeking affective health care
Recycling former psychiatric hospitals in New Zealand
The status quo is not an option’
Discourses of disease
Place and Health
An engagement with public health concerns and aspects of social theory such as the structure/agency debate is crucial to medical geography. The imperatives underlying this engagement center on place, a geographical concept which is prominent in both social theory and recent health philosophy. Without detracting from its distinguished heritage, this reformed medical geography will analyze issues such as the consequences of illness and health servi…
Naming as Norming
The process of naming places involves a contested identity politics of people and place. Place-names are part of the social construction of space and the symbolic construction of meanings about place. Accordingly, we argue that the names applied to places in Aotearoa assist in the construction of the symbolic and material orders that legitimate the dominance of a hegemonic Pakeha masculinism. Attempts to rename (and in doing so, reclaim) places a…
Space in its place
Proclaiming place
This paper provides a critical review of recent geographical scholarship on place naming and contends that aural aspects of naming have yet to be fully worked into the research agenda. To begin to address this gap in the literature, we consider pronunciation to be an important element of the cultural politics of place naming within post-colonial societies. In asserting links between speaking and naming we are contributing to recent scholarship in…
Their finest hour
When investigating older people, human geographers have been almost exclusively concerned with distributive features or experiences of ageing, the latter often in relation to residential and caring environments. From both healthcare and welfare perspectives, these fields of research are extremely important. Notwithstanding, in an attempt to broaden geography's current engagement with older people, we argue for attention to be paid to older people…
Restructuring health and rural communities in New Zealand
The recent restructuring of health-care provision has particularly a•ected rural communities in New Zealand, a nation characterized by an emerging biculturalism in its policies and outlook. In this article we develop a framework linking health care, the rural experience of place and the national cultural fabric. After presenting the stories of two North Island communities undergoing transition, we consider the role of health care in influencing t…
The place of health in the health of place
Narrative analysis as a strategy for understanding interview talk in geographic research
Narrative analysis produces strategies to inform the conduct, interpretation and presentation of interview talk, and encourages and enables researchers to take account of research participants’ own evaluations. We suggest this to be a useful method for geographers because it focuses on how people talk about and evaluate places, experiences and situations, as well as what they say. With an example from health geography, we show how it allows for i…
New Zealand children's health camps
Under curfew and under siege? Legal geographies of young people
Nuances of neighbourhood
Narrative and metaphor in health geographies
Placing private health care
To Boldly Go? Place, Metaphor, and the Marketing of Auckland's Starship Hospital
In this paper, we place the naming of the Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, within the context of increasingly consumer-oriented health care provision. This use of metaphor alludes to the hospital's distinctive design features and represents an attempt to de-emphasise connotations associated with institutionalised medicine, thus normalising the place for children. However, those naming the hospital had more than children in m…
Medical geography
Seeking affective health care
Everyday health histories and the making of place
The safe journeys of an enterprising school
Seasonal and locational variations in children's play
The status quo is not an option’
Another day in paradise? Life on the margins in urban New Zealand
Can Virtual Streetscape Audits Reliably Replace Physical Streetscape Audits
Geographies of inequality
Crossing roads, crossing boundaries
Children's journeys between home and school have become increasingly problematic in Western cities as a result of intensifying traffic and safety concerns. Many parents now take their children to school by car and, through driving, exacerbate congestion. In response to this situation, a number of school communities, in partnership with local authorities, have established walking school buses (WSBs). In this paper the WSB phenomenon is critiqued, …
Consumerist ideology and the symbolic landscapes of private medicine
Spatial patterns of attendance at general practitioner services
Housing satisfaction, preference and need among the chronically mentally disabled in Hamilton, Ontario
The place of health in the health of place
Birth places
Another day in paradise? Life on the margins in urban New Zealand
The stress of incipient homelessness
This paper describes a longitudinal study of dwelling‐related stress among a sample of inadequately housed urban New Zealanders. At the time of the first interview, the respondents were asked to describe the housing problems they were encountering and to list some of the coping strategies they were planning. From an analysis of the survey data we conclude that housing stress has a significant negative effect on the well being of the respondents, …
Ethnicity, morbidity and health service utilization in two labrador communities
Place and Health
An engagement with public health concerns and aspects of social theory such as the structure/agency debate is crucial to medical geography. The imperatives underlying this engagement center on place, a geographical concept which is prominent in both social theory and recent health philosophy. Without detracting from its distinguished heritage, this reformed medical geography will analyze issues such as the consequences of illness and health servi…
Space in its place
Housing stressors, social support and psychological distress
Special needs versus the ‘level playing-field’
Housing stressors and social support among the seriously mentally Ill
This paper explores the links between housing‐related stressors and psychological distress among the seriously mentally ill. The housing that is typically available for the mentally ill is often grossly inadequate, and can represent a significant source of additional stress. We hypothesize, however, that for some people the adverse effect of housing stress is mitigated by effective social supports. In other words, the stress/symptom relationship …
The Residential Mobility Experiences of Marginalized Populations
This article situates the housing experiences of marginalized urban groups within the social, economic and ideological shifts that have recently occurred in Western cities. Within this theoretical context, the residential mobility experiences of two samples of respondents who represent groups marginalized within the New Zealand housing market are examined: the seriously mentally ill (n = 203) and households in serious housing need (n = 279). Data…
Medical geography
Healing the masses
The patient in the family
Mental health and the built environment
Deinstitutionalization meets restructuring
Aids and medical geography
A healthy state of dis-ease pervades medical geography. As Michael Dear proclaimed as discussant to the 1995 AAG session ’Place and health: connections in geographical research’, ‘... medical geography is dead but not discarded’. Predictably, there were those for whom such a diagnosis was offensive. For many, however, what followed was a
Naming as Norming
The process of naming places involves a contested identity politics of people and place. Place-names are part of the social construction of space and the symbolic construction of meanings about place. Accordingly, we argue that the names applied to places in Aotearoa assist in the construction of the symbolic and material orders that legitimate the dominance of a hegemonic Pakeha masculinism. Attempts to rename (and in doing so, reclaim) places a…
Improving the health of the poor
Consumerist ideology and the symbolic landscapes of private medicine
Narrative and metaphor in health geographies
Restructuring health and rural communities in New Zealand
The recent restructuring of health-care provision has particularly a•ected rural communities in New Zealand, a nation characterized by an emerging biculturalism in its policies and outlook. In this article we develop a framework linking health care, the rural experience of place and the national cultural fabric. After presenting the stories of two North Island communities undergoing transition, we consider the role of health care in influencing t…
Third sector stories - taking community seriously
Sociology (60 works) · Political science (44 works) · Medicine (38 works) · Geography (33 works) · Psychology (32 works) · Economic growth (21 works) · Health care (21 works) · Law (21 works) · Social science (21 works) · Economics (20 works)