Public Health Graduate Certificate in GIS

The role of Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, research and spatial analysis is a valuable tool in public health today to better understand the geography of disease and its risk factors. The role of GIS is rapidly increasing in the development of public health policy for targeted prevention and intervention methods. GIS technology is now applied by WHO, the CDC, FEMA, state and local health departments, and various other public health organizations.

In conjunction with UNT’s Department of Geography, the UNT Health Science Center’s (UNTHSC) School of Public Health (SPH) is now offering a 15 semester credit hour (SCH) certificate program to train students for public health research and practice in an academic or industry setting using GIS.

The Public Health Graduate Certificate in GIS is a 15 SCH program and can be taken independently or as part of a graduate degree program in SPH. By the completion of the certificate program students will be able to:

• Understand geographic information science principles in the context of public health
• Demonstrate knowledge of methods of the geospatial analysis of public health information
• Apply appropriate geospatial methods to public health research, practice, and policy
• Use GIS software and geodatabase design to access, manage, and analyze spatial health data