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.

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.

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

We examine how changes in environments drive health and disease dynamics, outcomes and risks.  We look at this from a variety of angles since disease and health risks are complex and multi-dimensional and require different perspectives, time and spatial views so as to inform policy and decision-making. Current projects include:

• 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..

• disaster epidemiology (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 health. We look at the relationship between diseases and different parts of a disaster event (pre, during and post). We also look at the social and mental health associated with disasters.

• accessibility and inequalities in health care (e.g. seasonal effects of access to healthcare; use of different modes of transport to access healthcare; location-allocation models; mass vaccination and physical accessibility; urban health equity; conflict zones);

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

• mobility (e.g. climate-drivers and how they contribute to mobility and disease circulation and transmission);

• climate + health 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 characteristics.

• GIS 4 Planetary Health. What is needed for continued sustainable development and a healthy population? Linked with data and communication and educational needs.

• 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);

• geospatial education for health practitioners (e.g. geohealth course, geospatial for planetary health mooc).

• etc..

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