URISA Announce Public Health Conference Speakers

08 April 2009, 11:33pm

April 8, 2009 (Park Ridge, IL) URISA is pleased to announce the participation of two important keynote speakers at it’s GIS in Public Health Conference taking place in Providence, Rhode Island this June 5-8, 2009.

Corrie Brown, DVM, PhD, Coordinator of International Veterinary Medicine for the College of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Georgia, will provide the opening keynote address on Saturday, June 6 on the topic of: Emerging Zoonotic Diseases and the Need for Global Surveillance.



Globalization has created a complex tapestry of trade in a myriad of goods and services. The world is increasingly reliant on the flow of trade, with an unprecedented level of economic interdependence between countries. This globalized trade and travel has effectively created a “collapse of space,” in fact, with the world becoming smaller regarding actual separation of people, animals, and places. One of the effects has been the emergence and dissemination of animal and human diseases, often one and the same, e.g., SARS, HPAI, Nipah, BSE. These emerging zoonotic diseases pose a great threat to the world. The concept of “one medicine,” which has been discussed for decades, has special resonance now, and it is imperative that awareness and response systems between animal and human health be coordinated and integrated, in order to effectively safeguard the global public health.

On Monday, June 8, Leslie Lenert, MD, MS, FACMI, Director of the National Center for Public Health Informatics at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will deliver the closing keynote address:
A Framework for Geospatial Web Services for Public Health.

Public health has a greater need than ever to access and share current and accurate information to support surveillance, preparedness, policy development and case management. Traditionally, the public health community has either kept information in jurisdiction and program controlled data warehouses that are too soon out dated and are difficult to manage. Grid and Cloud computing technologies will allow public health practitioners to share information across jurisdictions and programs in a more timely fashion and thus eliminate redundant efforts, data silos, and intellectual investments. Dr. Lenert will discuss the Public Health Grid initiative and the web geospatial service framework integrated into this initiative. Based on a combination of the Globus grid and ESRI DGInet platforms, the Public Health Grid provides an integrated, secure framework that will allow public health partners to access and share geospatial web services across local, state, and federal levels and to integrate those resources in desktop and web applications.

Complete conference details

Geo: International