GIS for Disease Surveillance Training Course

This course equips participants with practical skills to apply GIS to disease surveillance and outbreak response. It focuses on geocoding cases, mapping disease patterns, cluster detection, risk factor analysis, health facility access, and dashboards for public health action.

Target Groups

• Epidemiologists and disease surveillance officers
• Public health and health information officers
• Monitoring and evaluation officers in health
• GIS analysts in health organizations
• Veterinary and One Health practitioners
• Ministry of health and NGO staff
• Managers and supervisors seeking to strengthen organizational practice in this field
• Consultants and professionals supporting related organizations

Course Objectives

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

• Explain how GIS supports disease surveillance
• Prepare and geocode health and case data
• Map disease incidence and prevalence
• Detect spatial clusters and hotspots
• Analyze environmental and demographic risk factors
• Map health facility catchments and access
• Use spatial time series to track outbreaks
• Support outbreak investigation and response planning
• Build dashboards for surveillance reporting
• Protect privacy and manage health data ethically

Course Modules

Module 1: GIS in Public Health Surveillance

• Surveillance concepts
• Role of GIS in health
• Disease mapping examples
• Data sources
• Software overview

Module 2: Health Data Preparation and Geocoding

• Case and facility data
• Cleaning and standardization
• Address and place geocoding
• Administrative boundaries
• Data quality

Module 3: Mapping Disease Patterns

• Choropleth and point maps
• Incidence and prevalence rates
• Rate smoothing
• Temporal mapping
• Cartographic design for health

Module 4: Cluster and Hotspot Analysis

• Spatial autocorrelation
• Hotspot and cluster detection
• Kernel density
• Space-time scan statistics concepts
• Interpreting clusters

Module 5: Environmental and Social Risk Factors

• Climate and environmental data
• Population and poverty layers
• Overlay analysis
• Vector habitat mapping
• Risk modeling basics

Module 6: Health Facility Access and Service Coverage

• Facility mapping
• Catchment and service areas
• Travel time analysis
• Coverage gaps
• Resource allocation

Module 7: Outbreak Investigation and Response Mapping

• Contact and case mapping
• Time-sensitive mapping
• Response zone planning
• Vaccination and campaign mapping
• Field data collection tools

Module 8: Dashboards and Reporting

• Surveillance dashboards
• Web maps
• Automated updates
• Reporting to decision-makers
• Visual communication

Module 9: Ethics, Privacy, and Data Governance

• Protecting patient confidentiality
• Data aggregation and masking
• Data sharing agreements
• Ethical mapping
• Legal frameworks

Module 10: Practical Exercises and Capstone Project

• Geocoding and mapping sample case data
• Detecting clusters and hotspots
• Analyzing facility access
• Building a surveillance map set or dashboard
• Presenting an outbreak mapping brief