Geospatial Analysis to Investigate Health Issues

The newly updated GIS Tutorial for Health, Third Edition, from ESRI Press, provides hands-on training in geographic information system (GIS) software for public health professionals and students. The third edition of this popular textbook trains readers on how to use ESRI's ArcGIS Desktop software to manage, analyze, and map data to reveal spatial patterns and trends. The lessons were recently updated to be compatible with ESRI's latest software release, ArcGIS 9.3.  

Health care professionals use the software to study geographically referenced data and create analytic maps that can, for example, show where lung cancer mortality rates are high and what factors might be involved. GIS software can be used to study an array of health data on illnesses, accidents, and uninsured populations to support health studies and formulate health care policies.

Readers will study GIS concepts, learn the various health applications for using GIS software, and work through tutorials that include case studies and data.  GIS Tutorial for Health, Third Edition, also contains a new tutorial that uses ESRI's ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension to estimate the demand for automated defibrillators in public places.

This step-by-step tutorial is a valuable resource for students in the classroom or individual users. The book comes with an ArcGIS Desktop 180-day trial DVD and a CD with new data.

The book's coauthors are Kristen S. Kurland and Wilpen L. Gorr. Kurland holds a joint faculty appointment in the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management and School of Architecture at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she teaches GIS, CAD, 3D visualization, and computer-aided facilities management (CAFM). Gorr is a professor of public policy and management information systems at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management at Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches and researches GIS applications.