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The GeoMed Project: GIS and
Spatial/Temporal Statistics in Public Health
Andy Long 3 ” 1 Mark Wilson b - 2 3 Geoff Jacquez c ' 3 Leah Estberg d ’ 1
a aelon@sph.umich. edu
b wilsonml@sph. umich. edu
c jacquez@biomedware. com
d lestberg@umich.edu
Commission VI, Working Group 3
Abstract
A grant from the National Cancer Institute established what we call “the GeoMed
Project”, for the preparation and evaluation of educational modules for teaching
spatial analytic theory and methods applied to human health data. The grant pro
vides as well for the development of software to help meet a crucial objective: to
promote the use of spatial and temporal statistics in public health.
In order to meet this goal, a web-based course has been developed at the Univer
sity of Michigan in cooperation with Ann Arbor, MI, software company BioMed-
ware, Inc. The course concentrates on statistics for the detection of clusters of health
events in space and time, disease surveillance, and the analysis of disease process
and pattern. Examples treated in the course and of particular relevance to public
health in Africa include malaria, Dengue fever, and toxic exposures. A web site
serves as a learning resource center of materials related to the course, and to spatial
analysis in general, providing a wealth of material on software, statistical techniques,
and example applications which visitors may find useful. The web site continues to
develop and improve as we reach the halfway point in the project.
In this paper we illustrate and demonstrate the various components of the project,
course, site, and software, showing how one may make the best use of the materials
we have assembled.
Key words: spatial statistics, spatial analysis, web-based education
1 Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan, and BioMedware, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI.
2 Departments of Biology and Epidemiology, University of Michigan
3 BioMedware, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI.
