This study presents a methodology to analyse the contextual determinants of health in urban areas and the results achieved through its application to the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), at a parish level. It’s concerned with a summary of the methodology that was developed and the results achieved on a PhD. dissertation (Geography of Health), presented in 2007 to University of Coimbra. Developed under an ecological view of health and disease, the research has focused the theorization and operacionalization of the multiple environmental dimensions and their possible impact on health, insisting mainly on the features that make the difference among places. The influence of the environmental dimensions on self-rated health and their relationships with individual health determinants have also been assessed.

key words: environmental health determinants; methodologies of data analyses; multidimensionality of the local environmental; self-rated health; Lisbon Metropolitan Area.