I had the opportunity to spend a few days last week in
Washington, D.C. at the American Association of Geographers Annual Meeting, where I presented a poster on research that explores access to treatment for opioid use disorder in
high-need areas (maps below). My poster was part of the Geospatial Health Research Poster
Session, which was one of many health-focused sessions at the conference.
On Friday, I was fortunate enough to spend the afternoon listening
to global health experts discuss possibilities and opportunities related to
building an international geospatial health research network (IGHRN).
IGHRN is a relatively new initiative focused on building international networks
of research and data sharing to address the most pressing issues facing the
world today. Given the increasing access to big data across the world, it makes
sense to try and create a network that can leverage these data to improve
global health.
I, along with the rest of the HealthLandscape crew, am excited
to see how the IGHRN develops over the next few years and to explore
opportunities for collaboration. For example, we are working on updating and improving our World Health Explorer (coming
summer of 2019), which is
an online mapping tool that allows users to map dozens of country-level health
indicators and explore trends over time.
HealthLandscape was built on collecting big data from
disparate sources and developing novel visualization methods so users can gain
new insights that would not have been possible if the data had remained
siloed.
Michael Topmiller, PhD
Health GIS Research Specialist, HealthLandscape
No comments:
Post a Comment