5 credits
This course enables students to acquire, manipulate and effectively display spatial data by introducing principles, methods, and techniques used in public health to help foster decision and policy-making based on the visualization of data. Students will further understand how public health researchers and practitioners can increase the impact of their work by using geographic information systems (GIS) to convey information and synthesize data from multiple sources. Using basic GIS concepts, such as coordinate systems, layering, buffering, joining, merging, and aggregating spatial data, conducting spatial queries, and appropriate visualization of spatial data, students will be able to visualize, analyze, and interpret data in an accessible and useful way.