GIS and Remote Sensing for Public Health and Epidemiology Course

Introduction

Epidemiology seeks to determine associations between exposure risk and disease that are spatially dependent. Public health focuses on the health of populations rather than of individuals and focuses more on prevention of health problems. These efforts fall naturally within the domain of problems requiring use of spatial analysis as part of the solution, and GIS and other spatial analysis tools are therefore recognized as providing potentially transformational capabilities for Epidemiology and public health efforts.

This course is to link common public health questions with appropriate statistical procedures; to offer a strong conceptual grounding in several important statistical procedures; and to describe how to interpret the results from the statistics in ways that are principled and will be persuasive to intended audiences using simple software tools. Statistics are a mainstay in the toolkit of public health professionals. Human memory being what it is, however, even Public health professionals with reasonable statistical training, over the years, often forget the basics. If professionals are going to make sensible use of consultants, communicate effectively with funders, and understand others’ reports, then they often need at least a conceptual understanding of relatively complex, recently developed statistical techniques.

Our main goal is to help the participants acquire hands-on skills in use of Geographic Information System (GIS) as a tool to capture, store, analyze, manage, and visualize disease cases data that is geographically linked. The participants will also acquire statistical data analysis skills.

Duration

10 Days

Objectives

•     To present to participants all data-related aspects of a GIS, such as the data models in GIS, data input, data editing, data visualization, metadata and managing a spatial database.
•     To develop Understanding on the different components of a GIS and the role GIS plays in solving epidemiological and public health problems.
•     Establish understanding on how to work with spatial data and GIS techniques to solve epidemiology and public health problems.
•     To Carry out advanced analyses of geographical data with specific reference to epidemiological related issues
•     To improve data management and analysis skills of the participants
•     To perform spatial and temporal epidemiological and public health analysis using GIS.
•     To expose participants to data capture, input, manipulation and display by GIS
•     To explain to the participant role of GIS as a decision support system in public health
•     To demonstrate to participant use of GIS in mapping health facilities and projects.

Course Content

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