Health Geoinformatics: Applying geospatial technologies and spatial information to health practice, research, and learning.

Abstract

Health Geoinformatics applies geospatial technologies and spatial information to health practice, research, and learning. Our interdisciplinary approach fuses geospatial technologies with health and community informatics to explore relationships among geography, health, and health care and to support community engagement, planning, decision-making, and health education. The current national focus on community-engaged research makes our large-scale integration of the concepts of community informatics and health informatics very significant. We apply community information and computing technologies (ICT), along with geospatial technologies, toward the enhancement of clinical and translational science research objectives, including development of better information about community factors that influence health behaviors and improved knowledge to communities for the creation and sustenance of community environments and systems that support public health.