From diane.gordon@shd.snohomish.wa.gov Tue Mar 30 08:45:48 1999 Received: from mxu4.u.washington.edu (mxu4.u.washington.edu [140.142.33.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with ESMTP id IAA21692 for ; Tue, 30 Mar 1999 08:45:46 -0800 Received: from 198.238.193.19 (shd.snohomish.wa.gov [198.238.193.19]) by mxu4.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.02/8.9.3+UW99.01) with SMTP id IAA06432 for ; Tue, 30 Mar 1999 08:45:46 -0800 Received: from shd.snohomish.wa.gov by 198.238.193.19 (AppleShare IP Mail Server 5.0.3) id 34428 via TCP with SMTP; Tue, 30 Mar 1999 08:50:50 -0700 Message-ID: <3700FFE4.D59F6EBF@shd.snohomish.wa.gov> Date: Tue, 30 Mar 1999 08:46:28 -0800 From: Diane Gordon Reply-To: dgordon@shd.snohomish.wa.gov X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en] (Win95; I) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 To: ph-assess@u.washington.edu CC: Gary Hanada , Mark Serafin , Subject: Re: Basic Epi Training References: <81057E4A014C3700@smtp.doh.wa.gov> Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------C8A358346D26725FBBAE2A87" This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------C8A358346D26725FBBAE2A87 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dick,, you did a great job of taking the mystery out of GIS for folks. ALthough we have been doing mapping up here in Snohomish for quite awhile, we would be very intresested in looking at different ways of doing spatial analyses and dealing with the small numbers problems. Right now we basically compare rates of diseases/events across our six health planning areas which is ok when looking at ecological associations but it has its limits. We'd be delighted to have you come spend a day with our epi/assessment staff and even possibly some folks from environmental health. Let me know if you're interested. PS we do have fast computers, MAPINFO and even a color printer and you wouldn't need 4 wheel drive! "Hoskins, Richard E." wrote: > Combining GIS and epidemiology is a great way for people to visualize > what is happening in their area no matter what the geography scale is, > county, Zipcode, census tract, or even at the street level. There is more > and more data available and reasonably priced GIS software that a > non-specialist can use with a day's training. And most of that is > learning effective ways to present public health data on a map ... that > is descriptive epidemiology. A table of numbers is of course useful and > must always be available, but when people have maps of disease and death > rates, maps of environmental hazards, maps of school violence in a > counties school districts, etc. a lot of common sense analysis (called > "spatial analysis" ) can be done without complicated statistics. Further > I have all kinds of notions about how to deal with small number problems > that are pretty easy to implement - you can have my computer programs for > nothing. Actually a lot of it for every county, Zipcode, census tract has > been done already. If you are a VISTA user it's pretty simple to download > data and start making maps. Lots of counties have GIS data available > already. I can show you how to use it in your assessment activity or > whatever you need. > > This training is available for local health ... although we have never > really formally organized it. I can imagine scenarios of my coming to you > or you coming here. My going there can likely be covered somehow from > this end, it involves gas and a night in a motel. I have a 4 wheel drive > and chains; I have no problem coming over the passes. I can do a course > on whatever computers you have. I can run the GIS programs I recommend > on a 486/50. Of course a faster computer is ... faster. It doesn't have > to be a fancy computer lab, although that is always nice. The data I use > is real data. With the usual datasharing agreements I can bring data with > me for your county or district that is geocoded to the street level and > ready to map. Also I have population data block group up age x race x sex > x ethnicity for 1990 and projected past 2000 produced by Claritas Inc. > For local health it is available for no cost. > > Most people have a notion that GIS is hard to learn, expensive and > requires a specialist to do it for you. Not true. There are very good GIS > programs available for $400. I just got one for $100 and it looks like it > will have excellent potential for public health GIS & mapping. You > likely do not need more than 1 or 2 copies. If you have a simple deskjet > printer you can make superb publication quality maps. On special > arrangement we can make big (4' and larger) here. > > Suppose you could take VISTA output, or anything else you have and turn > it into maps for meetings, publications, or web sites? But there is more > to it than just maps. Its kind of the higher end of descriptive > epidemiology. > > > > Richard E. Hoskins > GIS & Spatial Epi Unit > Office of Epidemiology > WA State Dept of Heath > eMAIL: REH0303@doh.wa.gov > tel: 360-236-4270 > fax:360-236-4245 --------------C8A358346D26725FBBAE2A87 Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="diane.gordon.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for Diane Gordon Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="diane.gordon.vcf" begin:vcard n:Gordon;Diane tel;pager:425 356-8936 tel;cell:425 290-2057 tel;fax:425-3395218 tel;work:425-339-5290 x-mozilla-html:FALSE org:Snohomish Health District;Health Statistics and Assessment version:2.1 email;internet:dgordon@shd.snohomish.wa.gov title:Epidemiologist/Manager adr;quoted-printable:;;3020 Rucker Avenue=0D=0ASuite 102;Everett;WA;98201; fn:Diane Gordon end:vcard --------------C8A358346D26725FBBAE2A87-- .