Geography and Health

GeoHealth aims to give students comprehensive knowledge and skillsets to critique and address a range of global health issues.  Students will be introduced to a variety of topics and concepts centred around how geo-spatial information and technologies can be used for addressing health and disease. Three main facets of public health will be covered: 

• health risk – understanding where and when risks are and who may be affected; 

• health response & services – examining accessibility to healthcare and inequalities; and 

• health communication & decision making – communicating risks and the role of digital information and tools in providing information and aiding the decision-making process that includes data structures and ethics.

All journal articles relevant for the lessons will be provided each week.

Must have: The following sources are useful and will be referenced in the first few lessons.

• Blanford, J.I. (2024) Geographic information, geospatial technologies and spatial data science for health. Pp376. CRC Taylor & Francis. https://www.routledge.com/Geographic-Information-Geospatial-Technologies-and-Spatial-Data-Science-for-Health/Blanford/p/book/9781032563565

Additional texts used (free).

• Bonita, R., R. Beaglehole & T. Kjellstrom. 2006. Basic epidemiology. World Health Organization (WHO). http://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/10665/43541/1/9241547073_eng.pdf (also available in other languages https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/43541 - Polish, Italian, Persian, German, Portuguese, Swedish, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese)

• CDC. 2012. Principles of Epidemiology in Public Health Practice. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. http://www.cdc.gov/ophss/csels/dsepd/SS1978/SS1978.pdf

• WHO. 2021 WHO Guidance on research methods for health emergency and disaster risk management. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/345591

• Blanford et al., (2024) Geospatial for Planetary health. https://www.geoversity.io/courses/geospatial-planetary-health/

• Makanga, P. T. (2021) Practicing Health Geography: The African Context. 1st ed. Global Perspectives on Health Geography. Cham: Springer Nature. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-63471-1 Practicing Health Geography: The African Context | SpringerLink

Optional: 

• Spillover. David Quammen

• Cromley & McLafferty. GIS and Public Health.

GeoHealth, a course based on the text by Blanford (2024) designed to integrate epidemiology with GIS and spatial data science. 

During the course students will be introduced to different spatial analysis methods and spatial concepts useful for the analysis of health and disease. These include the collection and use of spatial data from a variety of sources of variable quality, identifying disease clusters and hotspots, mapping disease prevalence and understanding where, when and why disease incidences may be occurring and who may be affected.  

justine blanford GIS Geography GIScience Health Disaster planetary health geohealth vaccination malaria geoAI  klass geographic information medicine measles cholera flood heat temperature WASH bicycle accessibility earth observation remote sensing UAV drones worms parasite mental health education python esri arcgis geoda arcgispro geospatial spatial data rainfall green spaces