A manager's guide to public health geomatics

As a programme, GeoConnections selected public health as a priority sector to support due to the significance of health and well being to Canadians, the potential for geomatics to improve the efficiency of public health services and interaction between health jurisdictions across the country, and the spatial components within most health data sets lend themselves to geospatial analysis and as a me [...] The document covers a large range of topics and provides the following: • An overview of geomatics in the public health sector including the relevance of geomatics to public health matters, the current status of public health geomatics use in Canada and abroad, and common challenges encountered when applying geomatics within public health organizations. [...] Methodology The focus of the project’s research was to: 1. Conduct an environmental scan to determine the general state of geomatics in public health and more specifically identify: the extent of understanding of geomatics within the public health community, the development intentions of various organizations involved with public health and identification of organizations that are leading the fiel [...] The document provides the following: • An overview of geomatics in the public health sector including the relevance of geomatics to public health matters, the current status of public health geomatics use in Canada and abroad, and common challenges encountered when applying geomatics within public health organizations; • A review of GeoConnections funded projects pertaining to the public health se [...] Section 4, Applying Geomatics in Public Health, presents additional insight into the application of geomatics and GIS in public health, the data required and ways in which to discover the required data, and a discussion of the issues and approaches to working with the sensitivity of public health data.