CPGIS Health-GIS Workshop a Great Success

 The first CPGIS Health-GIS Workshop was successfully held at Beijing Normal University, June 27-29. About 100 attendees from more than more than 40 organizations attended the workshop.

 

The workshop consisted of 18 lectures, covering topics from environmental health analysis, infectious disease modeling, healthcare service access optimization, to governmental support to health-GIS. The 18 lecturers were from US and Chinese universities, research institutes, and governmental agencies (US NIH and China CDC). Details of these lectures can be found at http://cpgis.org/health/.

 

The workshop was initiated by CPGIS and received strong support from the State Key Lab of Resources and Environmental Information Systems, State Key Lab of Remote Sensing, Geographic Information Committee of the Health Information Society of China, Public Health Information Committee of the Health Information Society of China, and ESRI China. The College of Global Change and Earth System Science of Beijing Normal University carried on the task of hosting the workshop.

 

Almost every lecture was followed by enthusiastic discussion.

 

People at the workshop see it not only as a place of teaching and learning, but also as an opportunity of networking. Through this workshop, a community for professionals in this area in China has been initially formed.

 

“I am really excited and inspired by these lectures. I think our institute wants to do health-GIS. Now my question is: where should we start?” This might be the most common question we heard at the end of the workshop.