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A Spatially Enabled Population Health Framework for Disease Surveillance
This project will develop a web-based health information tool that can be used to support disease surveillance. This tool, which uses location-based or geospatial information, will allow public health officials in B.C. to analyze disease and population-health ecology (the interrelationships of the broad range of factors that affect population health).
The theoretical concept of population health perspective on disease surveillance is that the simple but important epidemiological construct of disease rate requires a sophisticated understanding of the population at risk, based on both the transmission characteristics of the disease agent and the vulnerability of the underlying population. Case identification and reporting, the traditional disease surveillance approach, fails to consider that diseases do not occur at random, but result from the complex interplay between multiple factors. For example, reporting disease rates based on administrative population boundaries alone may mask significant clusters of disease that require active intervention. Knowing the context in which diseases occur is vital to preventing or dealing with outbreaks.
This project is unique in that it combines disease surveillance with this important context of health ecology and recognizes that geography is essential to this context. By incorporating Canadian Geospatial Data Infrastructure standards, this project will enable health practitioners to explore the myriad factors that potentially influence diseases—population and demographic structures, housing conditions, health resources, socio-economic status, land uses, water bodies, watersheds, and drinking water systems, to name a few.
This context-driven approach will equip health practitioners to identify and
better understand disease clusters, patterns of disease distribution over time
and space, disease diffusion paths, and potentially vulnerable communities.
It will also provide practitioners with pertinent information for disease control
and prevention.
Primary Partner:
B.C. Ministry of Health Services
Victoria,
British Columbia;
Partners: BC Centre for Disease Control; B.C.'s Integrated Land Management Bureau (ILMB)
Funding From GeoConnections: $96,229.50 ( 61.8 %)
Estimated Inception Date: July 1, 2006
Estimated Completion Date: April 30, 2007
Deliverables from this project benefitted the following provinces: British Columbia;