Health geographers have generally been content to adopt measures of distance, access and the lack of resources as the metrics of social (in)justice without critically placing their research in a framework of social justice. The purpose of this review is twofold: first, to examine recent research in health geography under three themes – access to care, neighbourhoods, and health and environmental justice; second, to introduce a debate about idealist theory as a way of introducing a theory of social justice into health geography which might prove valuable to underpin what many health geographers are trying to do in their research on access to care, neighbourhoods, and health and environmental justice.