Shifting the gaze of the physician from the body to the body in a place: A qualitative analysis of a community-based photovoice approach to teaching place-health concepts to medical students.

Medical practitioners, trained to isolate health within and upon the body of the individual, are now challenged to negotiate research and population health theories that link health status to geographic location as evidence suggests a connection between place and health. This paper builds an integrated place-health model and structural competency analytical framework with nine domains and four levels of proficiency that is utilized to assess a community-based photovoice project's ability to shift the practice of medicine by medical students from the surface of the body to the body within a place. Analysis of the medical student's photovoice data demonstrated that the students achieved structural competency level 1 proficiency and came to understand how health might be connected to place represented by six of the nine domains of the structural competency framework.