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ACSM Bulletin online
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ACSM Bulletin | June 2008| #233
NSF awards fellowship to Penn State student
—by Matt Swayne
Student to use lessons in geographic information
systems to enhance disease surveillance
To increase the sharing of disease detection knowledge and technology, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a fellowship to Chris Goranson, a Penn State World Campus student in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), through the East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes. As part of the fellowship,
Goranson, who serves as the director of the GIS Center at the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, will team up with scientists from Japan’s National Institute of Public Health on a project to compare cluster detection methods used in syndromic surveillance*.
Goranson said that the Penn State online courses, especially the GIS Analysis of Health (GEOG 597K) and Geographical Information Analysis (GEOG 586), were instrumental in attaining the fellowship. “I enjoyed the online GIS program immensely,” Goranson said. “I honestly think that the only way I could even be considering this fellowship, at this point in time, is because of those courses.”
According to Goranson, health professionals are discovering that GIS technologies can help detect rapidly evolving disease outbreaks and emergencies. “There’s been a recent explosion of uses in GIS and a corresponding urgency in public health because they can be so instrumental,” Goranson said. “GIS has a long history in the oil and gas industry, for example, but public health is different because you’re looking at health outcomes among a population that is more fluid.”
According to David DiBiase, senior lecturer in Penn State’s Department of Geography, epidemiologists recognize the geographic component of many public health problems, from AIDS to avian flu to certain cancers.
“Chris is in the vanguard of analysts who are leveraging the analytical capabilities of geographic information systems (GIS) and related tools to advance the state of the art in epidemiology and public health security,” DiBiase said. “We are very proud to be able to help Chris master the knowledge and skills he needs to make a difference in his important field.”
For more information, visit www.worldcampus.psu.edu/ online. Penn State World Campus specializes in adult online education, delivering 62 of Penn State’s most highly regarded graduate, undergraduate, and professional education programs through convenient online formats.
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* Syndromic surveillance is an early-detection system that uses computer modeling to detect patterns that may indicate an outbreak of disease or the existence of another health concern.
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