The Geographic Data Science Lab at the University of Liverpool invited the HeRoP Lab to talk about their work on integrating geographic data science thinking into public health policy & practice. If you missed the presentation live, you can now catch the rerun at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcHwPNd-nck.
Integrating Geographic Data Science into Public Health & Policy
A spatial perspective isn’t (just) about making compelling visualizations, but also investigating how complex human-environment interactions impact the theory, design, methods, and infrastructure of research. Detangling how place impacts, interacts with, and/or drives factors of health outcomes for different people and neighborhoods is essential to reduce health disparities. In this talk we’ll highlight recent projects that engage an intersectional framework to inform how researchers and policymakers think about health, place, and disparities. And, share lessons learned around how this kind of research can best make an impact in policy and public spaces.
For example, a place-based approach was extended to US Covid Atlas development, where distributed spatial infrastructures were used to tackle issues of disparate data sources and address the need for data-driven knowledge discovery and more sophisticated spatial analysis central to the U.S. COVID pandemic. The Atlas engaged a research coalition and incorporated principles of user-centered design to ground the direction of application development. How research could be used for multi-sector audiences proves crucial to inform choices in science translation. During a time of increased attention to the social determinants of health, intersectional spatial analysis may provide actionable information for key stakeholders to better understand, communicate, and transform regional health.
The presentation was led by Marynia Kolak and Dylan Halpern of the HeRoP lab!
Healthy Regions & Policies Lab 