At the Intersection of Geography and Public Health: Challenges and Opportunities
Public health and geography are closely intertwined. Geography is an integral part of public health as it helps in understanding the spatial patterns of health outcomes, identifying vulnerable populations, and guiding public health policies and interventions. By leveraging geographic data and tools, public health professionals can make evidence-based decisions to improve the health and well-being of communities. In this presentation, I will describe how these two fields have benefited from each other, and provide an outlook on the research opportunities that lie ahead.
Speaker Biography
Eric Delmelle is a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Geography & Earth Sciences at University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a Teaching Faculty in the School of Design at UPenn, Philadelphia. His teaching and research interests include GIS, epidemiology, geovisualization and data science. He is also faculty associate at the University of Eastern Finland and the Vrije Universiteit Brussels, in Belgium.
He received his M.A. in Geography at SUNY Buffalo in 2001, his M.S. in Industrial Engineering at SUNY Buffalo in 2004, his PhD in Geography at SUNY Buffalo in 2005, and a Master in Biostatistics in 2022 from Erasmus University.
His research is articulated around three themes: (1) modeling and visualization of vector-borne diseases outbreaks; (2) modeling of water contamination in rural counties and risk communication to remote populations; (3) geographic access to care with a particular focus on residential mobility.
He has been funded by the March of Dimes Foundations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the North Carolina Water Resources Research, the North Carolina Department of Justice, and the National Science Foundation.
He serves as the editor for Cartography and GIScience.