GeoHealth, Planetary Health, Global Health, Public Health, Disaster Health, Climate Health, One Health?

Climate Health, Disaster Health

GeoHealth, Planetary Health, Global Health, Public Health, Climate Health, Disaster Health, One Health?

Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity that will affect the health and well-being of the population. Now more than ever we need to understand what changes are taking place in our environment spatially and temporally, locally and globally. Many health challenges are complex crossing social-ecological systems (SES) that are comprised of many components distributed across scales, often compounded by different socio-economic and environmental drivers operating non-linearly. The circulation, transmission and evolution of diseases are driven by a range of factors such as those that relate to the environment, host, pathogen and how they interact in space and time. The outcome of these interactions can be further mitigated or exacerbated by cofounding factors that may be related to socio-economic factors (and other vulnerabilities), coping capacity of the individual or community and the hazard and exposure. Disasters act as a catalyst, often accelerating health outcomes.

GeoHealthr+o = ((A ∩ H ∩ E )+((HE) x V x CC)))t

                         Risk and Outcomes = ((Agent - Host - Environment)+(Hazard x Exposure) x Vulnerability x  (lack of ) Coping Capacity) * time

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approaches for public health and epidemiology enable us to take an integrated health approach to address a range of local and global health challenges that cross social-ecological systems. We do this by integrating a variety of data (some novel, some volunteered, some authoritative, some big and messy) in a GIS and use a mix of spatial analysis, data science, social science and machine learning/GeoAI methods with mathematical, statistical and geocomputational models to address applied research questions across a wide range of health topics. 

Our work centers around three main facets that essentially capture exposure pathways, vulnerability factors and health system capacity and resilience:

• understanding the ecology of disease/health risks and outcomes across space and time. Our work integrates host-pathogen-environment interactions in dynamically changing environments so that we can understand what this means for health outcomes;

• how to respond. It is not enough to just understand disease and health risks and outcomes but also to think about how to respond so that we can minimize current and future risks;

• what to communicate how. With the availability of different technologies we are now able to communicate through a variety of channels and in many different ways. Knowing where and when risks are and how to respond is important for reducing health risks and outcomes.

We examine how changes in environments may result in different outcomes and lead to risks.  We look at this from a variety of angles since risks are complex and multi-dimensional and require different perspectives, time and spatial views so as to inform policy and decision-making. 

Here is a list of different projects:

• climate extremes and how it affects different populations due to seasonal variations as well as extreme weather events. Examining how heatwaves and floods affect health risks and outcomes based on different socio-economic and population characteristics. Also through healthy food environments (e.g. effect of frost-freeze events on the environment in intense agricultural cropping systems; when and where biopesticides can be used for controlling agricultural pests);

• disaster (risks pre, during and post weather events); understanding how disasters such as extreme weather events (e.g. heatwaves, flooding) and other changes in the climate affect society, the environment and the population. We look at the effects of different parts of a disaster event (pre, during and post) and how this affects infrastructure and coping capacity within populations including  mobility (e.g. climate-drivers and how they contribute to mobility and disease circulation and transmission) and communication (e.g. types of communication and warnings)

• accessibility and inequalities in services (e.g. seasonal effects of access to services; use of different modes of transport to access essential services; location-allocation models; mass vaccination and physical accessibility during a disaster (e.g. pandemic and other forms of disasters); urban health equity; conflict zones); We look at how geography and different modes of transportation can affect how people access essential services and where to best place services whether temporary or permanent.

• vector-borne diseases (e.g. mosquito-vectored diseases such as dengue and malaria; tick-vectored diseases); We examine risk to different vector-borne diseases and how changes in climate and seasons can affect the spatial and temporal distribution of the vector and the diseases they transmit.

• geospatial education for health practitioners. Many public health curriculum still do not offer a course in GIS. One of my goals has been to make GIS accessible to health professionals and has resulted in the development of Geohealth. GIS 4 Planetary Health. By linking data with communication and educational needs will help in continued sustainable development and thus contributing to a healthy population.

• communication through statistic and interactive maps and dashboards (e.g. geodata structuring for effective communication; user needs)

We contribute to 

• Disaster Resilience: Disasters affect the population in many different ways before, during and often long after an event has occurred. By taking preventative actions ahead of time or shortly after an event can reduce the populations at risk. We are working on this in different ways that include how to respond through communication and warnings, anticipatory actions and modelling of different risks.

• Urban Futures: Built environments can affect the populations in many different ways. This can be through inadequate access to necessary infrastructure services such as electricity, running water, sanitation, formalised housing, schools, fresh food and so on. Since much of the world's population now resides in an urban landscapes affect different populations is important. We do this through a variety of work in formal and informal settlements among others.

• GeoAI: The development of new methods to sift through large geographic areas and vast amounts of data to extract meaningful information, conduct pattern analysis, trend analysis, forecasting and development of models for improved prediction of risk and outcomes.

• Resource Security: Healthy environments result in reduced health risks and outcomes. By understanding the ecology of disease within the natural environment we can better understand how changes in the environment may affect outcomes. This may be due to changes in the quality of food due to a rise in vectors and the diseases they transmit or a response to a disaster event or create a disaster (e.g. sinkholes).

For more information about the work we do on geohealth visit the topics highlighted below.

Research Projects 

See some of the geohealth projects we run and past workshops we have hosted.

Geospatial Education

Thanks to the COVID-19 Pandemic of 2020-2023 where the world shutdown, many educational institutes pivoted their education from face-to-face learning to one that is online. This has lead to the need to transform education to one that is more flexible and utilises the newer technologies.  Alongside this technological advances have also lead to disruptions in society that requires us to adjust how we learn and teach. Global education and training expenditure is set to reach at least $10 trillion by 2030.  Are higher education institutes ready to transform their education for the new demands?

We examine how to transform educational programmes to be fit for the future. We are examining

• what processes are needed to bring about changes into a programme?

• how to transform educational programmes to be fit for the future?

Bringing about reforms in education systems during times of disruptions is one of the most difficult tasks anyone can face. Tackling educational reforms in times of uncertainty is a daunting task.  How to start? How to bring about transformations? But also what to offer and how to offer our programmes?

But more importantly, how to breakdown barriers and make GIS accessible across disciplines- in particular the health sciences. John Snow's 1854 Cholera map has become a universal example of how maps transformed the field of epidemiology, yet GIS is often absent from health curriculums.  We have been examining the barriers to the uptake of GIS in the health sciences so that we can enhance the uptake of GIS in this field by enhancing geospatial literacy in health professionals.

Education Projects 

See some of the education projects we run and past workshops we have hosted.

Justine Blanford (2024) Geographic information, geospatial technologies and spatial data science for health. Pp376. CRC Taylor & Francis.

justine blanford GIS Geography GIScience Health Disaster planetary health geohealth vaccination malaria geoAI  klass

Justine Blanford