Abstract

Integrating GIS into Public Health Education
Track: Teaching with GIS in Higher Education
Author(s): Ke Xiao, Richard Scribner, Ronald Harris

GIS offers a spatial framework that may be utilized in the five subfields of public health education: Biostatistics, Epidemiology, Environmental health sciences, Health services administration, and Social and behavioral sciences. We discuss how GIS education was integrated into the curricula for students enrolled in Master of Public Health programs at Louisiana State University, Health Sciences Center, School of Public Health. The major goal was to build the school's capacity for research and training, by using GIS software and education materials in the classroom. Other objectives include training students for leadership roles in public health, to improve decision making, and for research program development among faculty, across the public health subfields to collaborate in problem solving. Examples of faculty collaboration and classroom applications will be presented, including tracking patients evacuated from Louisiana's public hospital system following Hurricane Katrina and by mapping chemical pollution and leukemia rates in Louisiana.

Ke Xiao
LSUHSC School of Public Health
1615 Poydras St.
Suite 1400
New Orleans , Louisiana 70112
United States
Phone: 504-568-5968
E-mail: kxiao@lsuhsc.edu

Richard Scribner
LSUHSC School of Public Health
2021 Lakeshore Drive
Suite 210
New Orleans , Louisiana 70122
United States
Phone: 5042801585
E-mail: RScrib@lsuhsc.edu

Ronald Harris
LSUHSC School of Public Health
2021 Lakeshore Drive
Suite 210
New Orleans , Louisiana 70122
United States
Phone: 504-280-1511
Fax: 504-280-1516
E-mail: rharr5@lsuhsc.edu