Improving Public Health Through Geographical Information Systems An Instructional Guide to Major Concepts and Their Implementation

As a teacher or potentialuser of GIS in public health activities, we hope you will examine this project and consider using it in your future teaching or other professional activity.

Geographical Information Systems and Public Health

The area of GIS and Public Health has risen to prominence in the past two years with the recognition that health surveillance practices and health service allocations need to become more sensitive to the needs of people in local geographic areas. The collection, storage and manipulation of geographic information has undergone a revolution in recent years with the development and widespread avaialability of GIS software. Many health professionals can benefit from further education in this area, and with their new knowledge, they can influence the progress of health surveillance, environmental health assessment and the geographic allocation of health resources.

health information systems--the increasing availability of geo-coded health data;
availability of digital geographic files that contain layers of geographical information;
availability of environmental exposure information;
GIS technology--inexpensive software is easier to use, contains increased functionality and runs on a wider range of hardware, including PCs;
methods of spatial analysis are becoming available as separate software modules or are embedded in GIS.

How is this material different?

Our interpretation of GIS differs from the popular "desktop mapping" concept of GIS which is common in many state and federal health programs. We deal with health, environment and socio-economic data at many geographic scales of analysis, starting with the individual entity. This web page, as well as the CD from which this information is drawn, offers instruction in the matching of health information by addresses to digital maps. After this has been successfully accomplished, software available on the CDROM as freeware (DMAP) can be used to prepare input for GIS software to make isoline maps showing areas of high and low disease incidence rates. Alternatively, individually geo-coded health data can be aggregated to any defined geography, including census entities or other areas of interest--for example, the pollution footprint of a point source pollutant. We teach the analysis of disease distributions as continuous spatial distributions that are tested for statistical significance. Programs in DMAP are available for this purpose.

Acknowledgements

Prepared by Gerard Rushton and Marc P. Armstrong, Dept. of Geography with assistance from Charles Lynch and James Rohrer, Dept. of Preventive Medicine and Program in Hospital and Health Administration

GIS Technical assistants: Rudy Banerjee, Sharmista Banerjee, Jay Chakraborty, Rajesh Krishnamurthy, and Jason Sheeley.

Production Design for the web version of this project by John Brogan and Dennis Crall. Additional advice was provided by Michael Young, Jason Maxham, and the beMedia group.

Interactive Design and Production of the CD-ROM version of this project by Dean Rathje and Michael Young, for Information Technology Services, Second Look Computing. Instructional design advice from Joan Huntley and technical assistance from Michael Ascroft, Karen Litwin, and Sandi Vitosh. The GIS Freeware Application for Windows was written by Barbara Zilles, Information Technology Services, Second Look Computing.

The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242

The materials on this web site have been prepared with grant funds from the U.S. Department of Education, (FIPSE), and matching funds from the University of Iowa. Neither institution assumes responsibility for the contents, which rests with the two senior authors. The material presented on this Web Site is designed for non-commercial use and can be copied and distributed freely for non-commercial purposes.