"... the most comprehensive manual on GIS in public health... Finally public health will have a battalion of qualified GIS analysts for the future. This [book] is so well researched and has such a great message that we plan to use it as our primary training manual for public health professionals throughout the state."
—Chris Chalmers, GIS Coordinator, Nebraska Health and Human Services, and Bioterrorism Response Section Director for GIS Public Health Research, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, CALMIT

GIS Tutorial for Health is a unique textbook for teaching geographic information system (GIS) software to health professionals. This book is designed to help students use GIS to solve problems in health-care and gain hands-on experience visualizing and analyzing health-related data. The scenarios address substantive issues of health care policy and planning.

With GIS Tutorial for Health guiding the way, students will design maps to investigate patterns of uninsured and poor populations, prepare spatial data to analyze environmental hazards, analyze youth pedestrian injuries, and much more.

Authors Kristen S. Kurland and Wilpen L. Gorr will help students learn and maintain new software skills while encouraging analytical thought and problem solving. Each chapter begins with a health issue or problem with a spatial component. Step-by-step tutorials show students how to solve the problem using ArcGIS software. “Your turn” exercises are designed specifically to benefit health management students and practitioners, computer specialists in the health field, and health-care managers and researchers. GIS Tutorial for Health serves primarily as a computer lab textbook and can also be used for self-study.

Please Note:
Trial Software: Included with the book is a fully functioning 180-day trial version of ArcView 9.1 software on CD-ROM, as well as a CD of data for working through the book's exercises. Once installed and registered, the single-use software cannot be reinstalled, and the time limit cannot be extended. The exercises may also be run on a licensed copy of ArcView 9.1, earlier versions of ArcView are not compatible.
Operating System(OS): The single-use ArcGIS Demo Edition software on the CD in this edition requires the Microsoft® Windows® XP or Windows 2000 operating system.
Hardware requirements: A minimum 1GHz processing speed; 512 MB RAM; 1 GB free hard disk space, including 50 MB on the operating system drive; an additional 285 MB hard disk space is required for the exercise data.

About the authors:

Kristen S. Kurland holds a joint faculty appointment at Carnegie Mellon University's Heinz School of Public Policy and Management and School of Architecture, where she teaches GIS, CAD, 3D Visualization, and Computer Aided Facilities Management (CAFM).

Wilpen L. Gorr is a professor of public policy and management information systems at the H. John Heinz III School of Public Policy and Management, Carnegie Mellon University, where he teaches and researches GIS applications.