Welcome to Geohealth

Learn about geohealth, geography and health.

What is geohealth

Geohealth brings together giscience and health so that we can better understand factors influencing the spatial patterns of health or disease occurrences. It is about understanding the where and when, why, and who may be affected so that we can figure out how to respond at a local, national or global level. Health and disease is complex and requires a dynamic approach to understanding the drivers behind the patterns that we see. Geo-spatial technologies and GIScience play a vital role in visualizing where and when diseases occur in space and time, providing context and helping us understand why they may be prevalent, who may be affected and how to address the problem potentially. We are a collaborative research and learning environment that enables us to address various health and disease issues all over the world.

GeoHealth for Planetary Health, Global Health, Climate Health, Disaster Health, Public Health, One Health?

60% of all human infectious diseases are transmitted from animals and microbes of animal origin. These ‘spill over’ due to increasing contact among wildlife-livestock-humans often driven by exponentially growing anthropogenic changes caused by human activities (e.g. changes in land use, changes in climate, changes in food security, changes in politics and changes in infrastructures (e.g. digitalisation, transportation networks, water & sanitation, etc.)) and the impacts of these activities on the environment.
17% of all infectious diseases are caused by vector-borne diseases resulting in more than 1 billion cases and more than 1 million deaths each year.
Can you imagine walking 26km in labour? A woman dies every 2 minutes from prevatable causes during pregancy and childbirth. With 400 million people lacking basic health care, 1.6 billion living in fragile environments with little to no access to health services and more than 15 million people waiting HIV treatment, we need to address access to health services and care.
Disasters - Each year more than 350 million people are affected by disasters resulting in over 2.6 billion people affected in the last decade.

Climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity that will affect the health and well-being of the population. Now more than ever we need to understand what changes are taking place spatially and temporally, locally and globally. Many health changes are complex crossing social-ecological systems (SES) that are comprised of many components distributed across scales, often compounded by different socio-economic and environmental drivers, many operating non-linearly. The circulation, transmission and evolution of diseases are driven by a range of factors (environmental factors, host-related factors and the pathogen itself) and how they interact in space and time. Geographic Information Science (GIScience), an integrative and technical science is well suited to address a range of local and global health challenges that cross social-ecological systems.

Geospatial information and technologies provide the necessary analytical tools useful for tackling a range of health and disease risks and outcomes.

Our work is centered around three main facets:

-understanding the ecology of disease/health across space and time (host-pathogen-environment interactions in dynamically changing environments) and what this means for health and disease outcomes;
-how to respond, and;
-what to communicate and in what format.

We examine how changes in environments such as climate and disasters drive health and disease dynamics as it relates to:

-vector-borne diseases (e.g. mosquito-vectored diseases such as dengue and malaria; tick-vectored diseases);
-disaster epidemiology (health risks before, during and after a disaster risk events);
-Climate health associated with extreme weather (e.g. heat, floods);
-food security (e.g. effect of frost-freeze events on the environment in intense agricultural cropping systems; when and where biopesticides can be used for controling agricultural pests);
-accessibility (e.g. seasonal effects of access to healthcare and the use of different modes of transport to access healthcare);
-mobility (e.g. climate-drivers and how they contribute to mobility and disease circulation and transmission);
-vulnerability and coping capacity of different populations (e.g. due to heatwaves, floods, accessibility);
-communication (e.g. data structuring for effective communication; what is being communicated; how it is being communicated)
-mental health & well-being (e.g. climate risk vulnerability & risk resilience in the short-term and long-term)
etc...

Interested in learning more seen: Geographic Information, Geospatial Technologies and Spatial Data Science for Health https://www.routledge.com/Geographic-Information-Geospatial-Technologies-and-Spatial-Data-Science-for-Health/Blanford/p/book/9781032563565?srsltid=AfmBOorlxBFJvFkUqBWYfTTJwPgJOht5dYUV1tHGzHlWks1KP1bbLtEu.

Articles of interest Spatial and temporal analyses

Marghidan, C. P., van Aalst, M., Blanford, J.I., Guigma, K., Maure, G., Pinto, I., Arrighi, J., and Marrufo, T. (2023) Assessing the spatio-temporal distribution of extreme heat events in Mozambique using the CHIRTS temperature dataset for 1983-2016. Weather & Climate Extremes. 40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wace.2023.100565
Aurit, M., Peterson, R.O., Blanford J.I. (2013) A GIS analysis of the relationship between sinkholes, dry-well complaints and groundwater pumping for frost-freeze protection of winter strawberry production in Florida. PLoS One. 8(1)
Blanford, J.I. and MGIS Geog 586 Students (listed in alphabetical order T. Belcher, T. Black, E. Derner, J. Dunham, E. Galvan Campanero, M. Gority, R. Jones, B. Kaley, J. Kuli, R. Ligon, E. Mandal, T. Quink, J. Shinsky, M. Sodek, N. Teigland, S. Turner) (2020) Pedal Power: Explorers and commuters of New York Citi Bikesharing scheme. PLoS ONE 15(6): e0232957
Pfau, L. and Blanford J.I. (2018) Enhancing wilderness search and rescue through the use of geospatial data and technology. The Professional Geographer. 70(3):434-442

Mobility & Accessibility

Blanford, J.I., N. Beerlage-de  Jong, S. Schouten, A. Friedrich, V. Araujo-Soares (2022) Navigating travel in Europe during the pandemic: from mobile apps, certificates, quarantine to traffic-light system. Journal of Travel Medicine. taac006, https://doi.org/10.1093/jtm/taac006
Green, B. and Blanford, J.I. (2020) Estimating populations in refugee camps: a toolkit using remotely sensed data. Proceedings of the 53rd Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. Pp 2197- 2206.
Blanford, J.I., Huang, Z., Savelyev, A. and MacEachren, A.M. (2015) Geo-located tweets. Enhancing mobility maps and capturing cross-border movement. PLos ONE 10(6): e0129202DataLink
Al-Huraibi, A., Amer, S., Blanford, J.I. (2023) Cycling to get my vaccination: how accessible are COVID-19 vaccination centers in the Netherlands? AGILE: GIScience Series, 4, 16, 2023
Blanford, J.I., Kumar, S., Luo, W. and MacEachren, A.M. (2012) It’s a long, long walk: accessibility to hospitals, maternity and integrated health centers in Niger. International Journal of Health Geographics.

GeoVisualisation

Tjaden, N. and Blanford, J.I. (2023) ENDIG. Interactive GeoVisualisation of Notifiable Diseases for Disease Surveillance Systems in Europe. AGILE GIScience Ser., 4, 46, https://doi.org/10.5194/agile-giss-4-46-2023
Felmlee, D., Blanford, J.I., Matthews, S., MacEachren, A.M. (2020) The Geography of Sentiment towards the Women’s March of 2017. PLoS ONE 15(6): e0233994
Blanford, J.I., Bernhardt, J., Savelyev, A., Wong-Parodi, G., Carleton, A.M., Titley, D.W. and MacEachren, A.M. (2014) Tweeting and Tornadoes. 11th International ISCRAM Conference. State College, Pennsylvania, USA.
MacEachren A. M., Jaiswal, A., Robinson, A.C., Pezanowski, S., Savelyev, A., Mitra, P., Zhangi, X. & Blanford, J. (2011) SensePlace2: GeoTwitter Analytics Support for Situational Awareness. Visual Analytics Science and Technology (VAST), IEEE Conference. 181-190.
Tomaszewski, B., Blanford, J.I., Ross, K., Pezanowski, S. & MacEachren A.M. (2011) Supporting Geographically-aware WebDocument Foraging and Sensemaking. Computers, Environment and Urban Systems.35:192-207

Host-Pathogen-Environment Modelling / Disease Ecology

Logan, J., Jolly, A., and Blanford, J.I. (2016) The Sociospatial Network: Risk and the role of place in the transmission of infectious diseases. PLoS One 11(2):e0146915
Kioko, K. and Blanford, J.I. (2023) Malaria in Kenya during 2020: malaria indicator survey and suitability mapping for understanding spatial variations in prevalence, intervention and risk. AGILE GIScience Ser., 4, 31
Taber, E., Hutchinson, M.L., Smithwick, E.A., Blanford, J.I. (2017) A decade of colonization: the spread of the Asian Tiger Mosquito in Pennsylvania and implications for disease risk. Journal of Vector Ecology. 42(1):3-12
Blanford, J.I., Blanford, S., Paaijmans, K., Schreiber, K., Crane, R., Mann, M., Thomas, M.B. (2013) Implications of temperature variation for malaria parasite development across Africa. Scientific Reports
Paaijmans, K.P., Blanford, S., Bell, A.S., Blanford, J.I., Read, A.F. & Thomas, M.B. (2010). Influence of climate on malaria transmission depends on daily temperature variation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 107: 15135–15139.
Klass, J.I., Blanford S., & Thomas M.B. (2007) Development of a model for evaluating the effects of environmental temperature and thermal behaviour on biological control of locusts and grasshoppers using pathogens. Agricultural and Forest Entomology. 9(3): 189-199.
Klass, J.I., Blanford S., & Thomas M.B. (2007) Use of a geographic information system to explore spatial variation in pathogen virulence and the implications for biological control of locusts and grasshoppers. Agricultural and Forest Entomology. 9(3): 201-208.