PBHLTH 177A
GIS and Spatial Analysis for Health Equity
The goal of this course is to acquire the knowledge and skills needed to approach public health problems from an equity or health justice perspective. Students will acquire mapping and spatial analysis (spatial epidemiology) skills and apply them in the context of structural inequity, health disparities, and racial justice. Geospatial skills are applied to public health problems that demonstrate differences in health exposures, risks, and adverse outcomes for BIPOC or economically disadvantaged individuals living in the US as well as those in low and medium income countries as compared to high income countries.
Topics
- Demonstrate the ability to design, implement, and apply spatial data to determine and display relative prevalence of diseases. ○ How: Create maps and perform kernel density and cluster/hot spot analysis for a specific disease ○ How: Create a dashboard to illustrate the location and incidence of disease cases Illustrate the limitations of political boundaries (census areas, cities, counties), in predicting disease prevalence, and equity issues associated with health risks. ○ How: Use appropriate classification schema to overcome the “Modifiable Areal Unit Problem” Report survey data cartographically. ○ How: Develop and execute a geo-enabled survey on a public health issue ○ How: Create an interactive map of survey results Illustrate how maps were used to contribute to structural racism by relating historic redlining maps to current health inequities. ○ How: Create a social vulnerability index from demographic and health indicators, and map the index by county ○ How: Compare a current map that illustrates social vulnerabilities to historic redlining maps from the Federal Housing Administration. Predict concentrations of an environmental contaminant where data are missing ○ How: Use Kriging to interpolate values in an area that has some missing data. Communicate information related to an important health issues including their geographic and demographic contexts. ○How: Create a Dashboard of health data ○ How: Use the ESRI StoryMap Builder to incorporate short narratives, maps, infographics, and images into a web-based interactive communication tool.
Official catalogue course objectives and student learning outcomes
Sources
- Course catalogue ↗2026-2027