ArticleAnnals of GIS2020
Why Public Health Needs GIS: A Methodological Overview.
Article in Annals of GIS, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 65 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
65 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Spatio-Temporal COVID-19 Modeling: A Global Systematic Review of Data Integration, Equity, and Lessons for Pandemic Preparedness.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2026Pooled it
- Insights into the spatial epidemiology of hepatitis C infection: systematic synthesis of area-level determinants and spatiotemporal analyses.BMC public health · 2025Pooled it
- Geographically clustered dietary patterns associated with body mass index among nationally represented adults in Malaysia: a substitution analysis.European journal of clinical nutrition · 2026Article
- Physics-Informed Graph Learning for Spatially Contiguous and Capacity-Constrained Hospital Service Area Delineation.Computers, environment and urban systems · 2026Article
- Geospatial heterogeneity of hotspots for incidence and late-stage diagnosis of breast, colorectal, and lung cancer.Cancer causes & control : CCC · 2026Article
- Exploring cross-city hospital visiting trips for medical service evaluation in urban agglomeration areas based on automobile navigation data.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Examining Nutritional Vulnerability in an Under-Resourced Community in Northeastern Connecticut.Nutrients · 2026Article
- Spatial agglomeration in the use of emergency telephone consultation services in a prefecture of Japan: a geographic information system-based spatial statistical analysis.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Bayesian Models to Generate Small Area Estimates of Population Health: Tutorial for Using Rate Stabilizing Tools and Their Output.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2026Article
- Geospatial variations and predictors of low birth weight in Sub-Saharan Africa: a geospatial modeling using evidence from demographic health survey 2015-2024.EClinicalMedicine · 2026Article
- Travel Distance to Dialysis and Mortality Among Hemodialysis Patients in a Geographically Small Country.Journal of community health · 2025Article
- Geospatial Insights into Healthcare Accessibility in Europe: A Scoping Review of GIS Applications.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Article
- Spatial and spatio-temporal analysis of cancer mortality in Iran: gender disparities and implications for health policy.Preventive medicine reports · 2025Article
- Digital divides in telehealth accessibility for cancer care in the United States.NPJ digital medicine · 2025Article
- Geospatial Visualization of Dialysis Accessibility in Shiraz: A Nonanalytical Geographic Information System Approach.Health science reports · 2025Article
- Location of Terminal Care in Pulmonary Hypertension.CJC open · 2025Article
- Using geographic information systems to map eye care service distribution in rural and remote Western Australia.BMC health services research · 2025Article
- Strategies to Implement a Community-Based, Longitudinal Cohort Study: The Whole Communities-Whole Health Case Study.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Association between snack intake behaviors of children and neighboring women: A population-based cross-sectional analysis with spatial regionalization.SSM - population health · 2024Article
5 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
1 author.
Funding
Abstract
The short paper provides an overview on how geographic issues have become increasingly relevant to public health research and policy, particularly through the lens of geographic information systems (GIS). It covers six themes with an emphasis on methodological issues. (1) Our health-related behavior varies across geographic settings, so should public health policy. (2) Facilities (supply) and patients (demand) in a health care market interact with each other across geopolitical borders, and measures of health care accessibility need to capture that. (3) Our health outcome is the result of joint effects of individual attributes and neighborhood characteristics, and an adequate definition of neighborhood is critical for assessing neighborhood effect. (4) Disease rates in areas of small population are unreliable, and one effective way to mitigate the problem is to construct a larger, internally-homogenous and comparable area unit. (5) Defining a scientific geographic unit for health care market is critical for researchers, practitioners, and policy makers to evaluate health care delivery, and GIS enables us to define the unit (e.g., primary care service areas, hospital service areas, and cancer service areas) automatically, efficiently and optimally. (6) Aside from various optimization objectives around "efficiency", it is as important to plan the location and allocation of health care resources toward maximum equality in health care access. Case studies are cited to illustrate each theme.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.