title: Putting chronic disease on the map: building GIS capacity in state and local health departments.
abstract: Techniques based on geographic information systems (GIS) have been widely adopted and applied in the fields of infectious disease and environmental epidemiology; their use in chronic disease programs is relatively new. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division for Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention is collaborating with the National Association of Chronic Disease Directors and the University of Michigan to provide health departments with capacity to integrate GIS into daily operations, which support priorities for surveillance and prevention of chronic diseases. So far, 19 state and 7 local health departments participated in this project. On the basis of these participants' experiences, we describe our training strategy and identify high-impact GIS skills that can be mastered and applied over a short time in support of chronic disease surveillance. We also describe the web-based resources in the Chronic Disease GIS Exchange that were produced on the basis of this training and are available to anyone interested in GIS and chronic disease (www.cdc.gov/DHDSP/maps/GISX). GIS offers diverse sets of tools that promise increased productivity for chronic disease staff of state and local health departments.
authors.affiliation: School of Natural Resources and Environment, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA. mlmirand@umich.edu
authors.forename: Marie Lynn
authors.initials: ML
authors.lastname: Miranda
authors.forename: Michele
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Casper
authors.forename: Joshua
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Tootoo
authors.forename: Linda
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Schieb
mesh_terms: D057191:Capacity Building; D002908:Chronic Disease / Q000453:epidemiology*; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D006296:Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D009111:Local Government; D013219:State Government