Des Plaines, IL, February 10, 2016 -- The Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA), in partnership with the American Public Health Association (APHA), invites abstract submissions for the 2016 GIS and Health Symposium. The theme for this year's Symposium is “Mapping the Way to Healthy Communities”. The event will take place June 1-3, 2016 in Washington, DC.

Abstract submissions are due on March 15, 2016.

The Symposium program will be developed, in large part, from abstracts submitted by the community through this Call. The Committee welcomes the submission of individual papers, complete sessions, and panel discussions on a variety of topics. We are specifically interested in abstracts related to the following topics.

• Connecting health with spatial relationships (and data) - thinking about health in a more spatial format
• Tools for policy-makers, planners, researchers.
• Role of GIS in communicating health information/issues
• Health impact assessments
• Metrics/measuring health outcomes through GIS
• Creating synergy between the public health realm and urban and regional entities carrying out planning, research and policy.
• Focused policy session – cross-sector session addressing the Surgeon General’s National Prevention Strategy “Health in All Policies” approach
• Access to healthcare / health facilities and services
• Agriculture and food systems (access to healthy foods, food safety)
• Active living, recreation, and physical activity from transportation; obesity strategies and interventions
• Health equity (include income considerations, minority groups, aging, persons with disabilities, etc.)
• Urban ecology/urban health – natural and human systems (social ecology; humans and environment)
• Climate change/resiliency - effects on natural and human health/systems
• Emergency preparedness and response
• Health and hazards
• Crime, violence, personal safety/health
• Injuries, disabilities, risk
• Built environment – land use, transportation, resource management systems, Complete Streets, infrastructure, “Healthy Communities” (Applying GIS to Build a Healthy Community); also livability; active communities (transportation and recreation)
• Epidemiology; disease vectors; spread of infectious diseases – emerging technologies and health issues (Ebola response, Zika virus, PAHO)
• Exposures (air quality, water quality, lead, etc.)
• Chronic diseases and the environment, including cancers, diabetes and obesity
• Mobile field data collection mobile field data collection (examples: homeless point in time counts, food safety/restaurant inspections, facility inspections that includes things like hospitals, nursing homes, foster care sites, etc.)
• Community mapping; crowd-sourcing health-related data
• Data privacy, confidentiality
• Other related topics

Individuals will be asked to further classify their proposal by indicating the applied methods and data sources for each submission:

• Basic statistical or GIS-based analysis
• Multivariate statistical models or mathematical models
• Spatial modeling and cluster detection
• Web-based delivering of data
• Mapping techniques
• Geocoding
• Surveys, vital statistics or census data
• Surveillance data
• Environmental spatial data
• Network analysis and site optimization
• GPS, handheld/mobile device, and other data collection tools
• Remote sensing
• Other

For further details and the online abstract submission form, http://www.urisa.org/URISAHealth

Contacts:

Wendy Nelson
Executive Director - URISA
Email Contact  
www.urisa.org   
847-824-6300
@URISA

Mark Your Calendar:

GIS/CAMA Technologies Conference - February 22-25, 2016 - Savannah, GA

URISA's 2016 GIS and Health Symposium - June 1-3, 2016 - Washington, DC

URISA Leadership Academy - August 1-5, 2016 - Chicago, Illinois

URISA's 2016 Caribbean GIS Conference - September 5-8, 2016 - Barbados

GIS-Pro 2016: URISA's 54th Annual Conference - October 31-November 3, 2016 - Toronto, Ontario Canada