GEOG 368 - Health GIS

This course builds on skills learned in the introductory Geographic Information Systems (GIS) course, focusing explicitly on geospatial techniques used for analyzing problems in public health. Mainly through lectures, discussions, hands-on lab exercises, and collaborative group work, students will learn to use advanced GIS tools to visualize and analyze public health issues, including: health disparities; neighborhood effects on health; spatial clustering of disease events, such as cancers; environmental health and environmental justice; infectious and vector-borne disease; and accessibility of populations to health care services. The course builds skills in spatial thinking, statistical and epidemiological reasoning, logical inference, critical use of data, geovisualization, and research project design. Students will be required to complete a final independent project on a topic of their choice. Laboratory work is required. Prerequisite(s): GEOG 225 and permission of instructor; completion of GEOG 256 and/or STAT 125 is highly encouraged before taking this course. Offered every year. (4 Credits)