Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease RegistryU.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Search  |  Index  |  Home  |  Contact Us  
 

Map from "Geographic Analysis of Childhood Lead Exposure." See Proceedings on this website.
GIS Conference Homepage Proceedings of the Conference PowerPoint Presentations from the 1998 Conference GIS in Public Health Home
1998 List of Attendees Links to GIS sites GIS in Public Health in the news ATSDR Homepage
 

 

 

 

Conference Sponsors

Distinguished Speakers

Abstracts by
Topic

Poster Presentations

Preconference Workshops

   

Geographic Information Systems in Public Health: Proceedings of the Third National Conference

EDITORS:

Robert C. Williams, P.E., DEE
Assistant Surgeon General

Director, Division of Health Assessment & Consultation
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Atlanta GA

Max M. Howie, M.S.
Chief, Program Evaluation, Records & Information Services Branch
Division of Health Assessment & Consultation
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Atlanta GA

Carolyn V. Lee, M.D., M.P.H., M.A.
Chief, Spatial Analysis and Information Dissemination Section
Program Evaluation, Records & Information Services Branch
Division of Health Assessment & Consultation
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Atlanta GA

William D. Henriques, Ph.D., M.S.P.H.
GIS Coordinator, ATSDR
Spatial Analysis and Information Dissemination Section
Program Evaluation, Records & Information Services Branc
h
Division of Health Assessment & Consultation
Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, Atlanta GA

 

FOREWORD

In 1996, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR) started on a journey to develop a national forum for technology transfer; a meeting where new and innovative uses of GIS would be encouraged, and frontiers for and challenges to the use of spatial analysis would be debated and discussed. The realization of that journey, and the tremendous efforts of many creative people, was the Third National Conference on Geographic Information Systems in Public Health, held August 18-20, 1998, in San Diego, California.

The power and potential of GIS is limited only by your imagination. Recent advances in the application of GIS technology have improved, and will continue to revolutionize the spatial analysis of diseases, environmental contamination, and social/demographic information. This technology offers public health professionals unparalleled insights as we enter the 21st century.

It is this vision that enabled the Third National Conference on GIS in Public Health. This shared understanding brought more than 500 conference attendees and presenters together with the pledge to communicate - sharing advancements in the development and/or implementation of GIS technology; cooperate - networking to share GIS resources to resolve demanding and complex public health issues at the local, state, tribal, and national levels; and, collaborate - seeking means to better promote research into and development of innovative applications of geospatial data and GIS technology. The Conference served as a forum for public health professionals from near and far to learn about computer mapping technology and spatial data analysis in health protection and disease mitigation.

The Third National Conference on GIS in Public Health was sponsored by ATSDR, with institutional cosponsors and partnerships. These included California State University at Fresno, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US Census Bureau, US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA), US Geological Survey (USGS), the American Public Health Association (APHA), the National Association of City and County Health Officials (NACCHO), the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO), the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) at Santa Barbara, the National Association of Local Boards of Health (NALBOH), and the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE). The local host for the Conference was San Diego State University (SDSU). In additional, two all-day GIS in Public Health workshops were provided by NCGIA Santa Barbara. The workshops provided attendees with an introduction to the use of GIS in the health sciences and an opportunity to learn more about spatial statistical techniques used to analyze health data.

The unlimited future of GIS in Public Health is built on centuries of public health surveillance activities, where health professionals have relied on maps to locate and identify changes in patterns of human disease. The GIS of today provides a relatively easy tool for overlaying and analyzing disparate data sets that relate to each other by location on the earth's surface. The growing availability of health, demographic, and environmental databases containing local, regional, national, and international information are propelling major advances in the use of GIS and computer mapping with spatial statistical analyses. The proceedings of this Conference challenge us to make the most of these unprecedented opportunities and to build on the legacy of the early practitioners. We started on our journey to reveal a public health world within the grasp of GIS; we are left with the mapping of a universe of GIS possibilities for the future.

ATSDR looks forward to an exciting future of enhanced public health and environmental protection. Through the use of GIS and Internet technology we can become more "connected" to one another than ever before, enabling the sharing of information and ideas of those who work closely with communities in protecting the health of our nation. Please encourage others to learn more about the power of place through the links and training materials provided here on the GIS in Public Health web site.



Robert C. Williams, P.E., DEE Assistant Surgeon General
Chief Engineer, USPHS















ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: The conference proceedings were developed under a contract with Eastern Research Group (ERG), located in Lexington, MA. ATSDR would like to thank Gail Schubert for her project management skills, Nick Kanaracus for his desktop publishing and web page development efforts, and Jan Power for the techincal editing of individual manuscripts and communication with the authors. Dr. Bill Henriques, ATSDR's GIS Coordinator was responsible for the technical oversight of the 1998 GIS in Public Health conference, the conference proceedings, and the overall development of these web pages. Please feel free to contact Bill if you have any questions or need some guidance.

DISCLAIMER: Links to non-Federal organizations found at this site are provided solely as a service to our users. These links do not constitute an endorsement of these organizations or their programs by ATSDR or the Federal Government, and none should be inferred. The ATSDR is not responsible for the content of the individual organizational webpages found at these links.