Geospatial Health (GeoHealth): Current Trends, Methods, and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

As an emerging field, Geospatial health (GeoHealth) integrates geospatial technologies, (spatial) epidemiology, and health services/resource allocations (health accessibility). The focus is to fight the burden of diseases that continue to ravage the globe, especially those in developing countries, despite the advancements in technology. Many diseases have become a global burden. In 2019, the global burden of diseases (GBD) estimated that six infectious diseases were among the top ten causes of disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) in children younger than 10 years. These include lower respiratory infections, diarrheal diseases, malaria, meningitis, whooping cough, and sexually transmitted infections.

While some diseases may only ravage local populations, their economic burdens have global impacts. For instance, under-developed and developing countries rely on advanced countries to support their health resources in order to sustain their annual budgets. Aside from that, vertical transmission via global trade and economic routes can lead to local diseases turning into global pandemics. The recent COVID-19 pandemic is an example. Therefore, local actions, based on reliable assessment and information of a population’s health status, need to be strengthened via improving surveillance and assessment of trends and risk, development of applicable intervention methods, and optimization and allocation of health resources. Local-level monitoring and evaluation leading to local actions is, therefore, a key ingredient for reducing the global burden of diseases.

Therefore, the focus of this Special Issue is to bring together knowledge geared towards the current trends in the application, integration, and development of geospatial technologies diseases epidemiology, spatial mapping and visualization of prevalence and mortalities, and accessibility to health services. Studies may focus on local, regional, or global scales. We encourage submissions that also focus on applications and new methods for small-area estimation, disease mapping, disease cluster analysis within the spatial and spatiotemporal framework. Submissions may also review and address issues and challenges related to the current trends of disease in question, disease data availability, data integration, computations, and reproducibility of study findings.

Looking forward to your valuable contributions to this Special Issue

Dr. Frank Badu Osei
Dr. Santanu Sasidharan
Guest Editors

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