GIS Analysis for Health Sector Programmes Course

The physical and social environment that surrounds us plays an important part in our health and wellbeing. The geography concept of ‘place’ thus cannot be ignored in public health. Whether investigating the level of environmental pollution, access to recreation or services, or the patterns or spread of disease, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) provide the standard platform for exploring spatial attributes and relationships between our environment and health.

This course offers an introduction to GIS and how it is used in public health and epidemiological research. It will introduce students to the basics including: working with and integrating spatial and non-spatial data; geographic scale and spatial precision; decoding; visualization; thematic mapping; and understanding spatial relationships. Specific skills and tools will be introduced in relation to assessing exposure to a range of environmental risks, and a particular focus will be given to methods for spatial linkage of exposure, contextual and confounder information for epidemiological or health risk assessment studies

Participants will apply their new skills to one of several case studies in topics on epidemiology, risk assessment or infectious disease. The course will offer a mixture of lectures, demonstrations and hands-on exercises in Quantum GIS (QGIS).

WHO SHOULD APPLY

Public health practitioners, epidemiologists, exposure scientists, quantitative health geographers, risk assessors, students.

REQUIREMENTS

No prior knowledge of GIS is required. Participants will be working on their own laptop with Quantum GIS (QGIS).

DURATION

5 Days

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

By the end of this course, the learner will - within a public health context - be able to:

• Understand the basics of spatial data and its role in decision making
• Undertake spatial analysis of environment and health data
• Explain why geographic data and tools are important for health decision makers
• Understand geography as a unifying framework and GIS as a tool to collect, link, analyze, visualize, manage, and share data and information
• Distinguish between the different tools used to collect, analyze, and manipulate geographic data
• Communicate with technical specialists to develop program-specific geographic products Work with and integrate spatial and non-spatial data
• Integrate data of different geographic scales and spatial precision
• Visualize spatial data
• Investigate spatial patterns of health risks and disease rates
• Produce thematic maps and reports

Others Details

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