Public Health and GIS, Mismatch of Job Skills and Theoretical Training

 

Abstract

 

            The escalation of geographical information system (GIS) application in several fields such as environment analysis has been progressive in relation to poverty, crime and education (Duecker and DeLacey, 1990, Huxhold, 1991, Harris and Batty, 1993). However, public health lags behind these fields in its use of GIS (Urban and Regional Information Systems Association, 1994). This limitation had largely been highlighted in the literature (see Fuertstein, 1987; Drummond, 1995; National Association of  Country Clubs Off, 2002). However, the development of measures and strategies that could enhance GIS in public health had been proposed in terms of location, area and even in data processing (Queralt and Witte, 1998; McLafferty, 1998; Rushton & Frank, 1995).

The area of GIS and Public Health has risen to prominence in the past two years with the recognition that health surveillance practices and health service allocations need to become more sensitive to the needs of people in local geographic areas. The collection, storage and manipulation of geographic information have undergone a revolution in recent years with the development and widespread availability of GIS software. Many health professionals can benefit from further education in this area, and with their new knowledge, they can influence the progress of health surveillance, environmental health assessment and the geographic allocation of health resources.

            This development provide a significant catalyst for the advancement of public health GIS and the use of geospatial data through the Internet (Croner, 2003). They provide timely stimulus for the delivery of public health geospatial information for community, state, and national uses. They portend important changes. Based on emerging geospatial infrastructure in the twenty first century.

A GIS can be a useful tool for health researchers and planners because health and ill-health are affected by a variety of life-style and environmental factors, including where people live, characteristics of these locations (including socio-demographic and environmental exposure) offer a valuable source for epidemiological research studies on health and the environment. Scholten and Lepper (1991),

With the huge increase in the use by planners of geographic information systems (GIS), a need has developed for accompanying statistical routines to aid in the analysis and interpretation of geographical data particularly spatial analysis. (Levine, 1996)  Many planners use GIS to isolate geographical areas, subpopulations, land uses, and road systems according to various search criteria, extracting objects on the basis of geographical or attribute conditions. The existing GIS packages are very sophisticated tools for geographical and database operations. They can conduct a wide variety of different overlay operations: creating buffers around objects, selecting objects by their proximity to other objects, unioning smaller objects into bigger ones and splitting larger objects into smaller objects, as well as implementing a whole range of database functions (e.g., conditional queries, object queries). (Levine, 1996)

The information contained in a GIS is not in itself unique. Rather, the uniqueness of GIS lies in its ability to integrate pieces of existing spatially-referenced information in unprecedented ways. Some go so far as to say that, based on the new perspectives offered by GIS, it might even constitute a new discipline (Goodchild, 1990).  Whether or not this is a realistic assessment, there is little doubt that GIS offers great benefits in the constructivist, holistic model upon which it is based--a perspective that is gaining attention among educators (Boyer and Semrau, 1995).

Many geography educators hold that enhancing geography education must include integrating spatial technologies such as GIS (Nellis, 1994).  GIS research has in turn expanded to include theoretical and practical questions about its place in the framework of education, (Suit, 1995) since lack of such understanding would undermine the potential of the tool itself (Donaldson, 1999).  Likewise, if GIS is to evolve into a significant force in education, more thought needs to be given to how it is implemented and used in classrooms. Most geography educators concur that successful GIS implementation will not be possible without a combination of (1) acknowledgment of its usefulness by teachers and administrators; (2) a concomitant level of financial support for this technology; (3) the provision of teacher training; and (4) the creation of networks to supply teachers and administrators with the entry-level and advanced information they need to implement GIS.

This study shall investigate the disparity in terms of the curriculum of spatial methods in the Masteral level and what is taught in Schools of Public Health using GIS (geographic information systems) and what employers, particularly in the Public Health sector both private and public expect these students to be able to do using spatial analysis tools competency. Moreover, this study shall include the state and local public health offices, public health research firms, and GIS educators in order to determine if their employees coming out of these schools possess the necessary skills or are they being taught on the job to use GIS.