Category: Publications

• March 29, 2026

  Understanding EJ Technospaces: A New Perspective

  Check out the HEROP’s lab latest article on understanding & advancing environmental justice (EJ) technologies and technospaces, published with open, free access at Wellbeing, Space & Society. The article reviews EJ technologies from Pellow’s view of Environmental Inequality Formation, tracing perspectives across national, state, and regional applications like EJ Screen. We include a survey of…
• December 2, 2025

  Understanding GIS and Health Geography in Dr. Kolak’s New Publication

  Dr. Kolak’s chapter on GIS & Health Geography provides a background on how health geography emerged and was shaped as a field when connected with GIScience perspectives and GISystems, generating new insight into health processes. This chapter updates the previous entry written by Professor Mei Po Kwan in 2014.
• October 2, 2025

  Innovations in Mapping Health & Structural Drivers of Disease & Well-Being

  Our editorial team (Dr. Kolak with Dr. Yanjia Cao and Dr. Michael Desjardins, Ph.D.) is thrilled to share that the our Collection at the Journal of Maps has been released, built and carefully curated over the past three years!! 😮 🤯 Check it out now at JOM.
• October 3, 2024

  Who gets access to medications for opioid use disorder?

  HeRoP Lab’s director Dr. Marynia Kolak was a co-author on two studies recently published in JAMA Open. Both examined different dimensions of access to medications for opioid use disorder, for different populations.
• March 24, 2022

  Listen: Marketplace highlights new research on internet access

  Cross-posted from Atlas Insights: The US Covid Atlas blog.  The nationally syndicated radio show and podcast Marketplace Tech interviewed postdoctoral scholar and US Covid Atlas co-lead Dr. Qinyun Lin (pictured above) this week on our latest research exploring the social determinants of health associated with higher COVID-19 mortality across different regions and communities. Published in the journal JAMA Network…
• March 4, 2022

  Assessment of Structural Barriers and Racial Group Disparities of COVID-19 Mortality

  COVID-19 highlights disparities in healthcare access & challenges facing US counties. Our team’s article in JAMA Network Open identifies relationships between structural barriers & racial/ethnic disparities of COVID mortality using spatial analysis. Data for the whole country available by race and age is at the regional scale – not every state provides race and age…
• October 26, 2021

  New Research on Dimensions of Uncertainty: A Spatiotemporal View of Five COVID-19 Datasets

  Research scientists from the US COVID Atlas team at the Healthy Regions & Policies Lab (HEROP) are pleased to share their new article, Dimensions of Uncertainty: A Spatiotemporal View of Five COVID-19 Datasets, which was published this week in the journal Cartography and Geographic Information Sciences. Dylan Halpern, Qinyun Lin, and Marynia Kolak from HEROP…
• March 26, 2021

  How sure are we about the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines?

  Once a vaccine is approved for distribution to the full population and no longer just to a test population, scientists expect the efficacy rates to change slightly. A new statistical tool can help assess the strength of results from clinical trials for vaccines and other studies. The tool has just been published in the Journal of…