GIS and Epidemiology

All public health problems require an epidemiological approach at some level to properly plan and implement intervention strategies. GIS is a useful tool in elucidating patterns and relationships between the person, place, and time components of epidemiologic data. PHRL uses epidemiology in conjunction with GIS in the following areas:  

• Bioterrorism prevention/planning, surveillance, and response

• Communicable disease control

• Environmental epidemiology

• Refugee health

• Incorporation of GIS into epidemiologic research and performing descriptive and analytic studies of the epidemiology of diseases

• Investigation of disease clusters