Professor Gerard Rushton, Department of Geography

Adjunct Professor, Department of Health Management & Policy
The University of Iowa, Iowa City, USA.

Gerry’s main interests are in the applications of GIS and geospatial data to problems of public health. He is particularly interested in how the burdens of disease fall unequally on different population groups and geographic regions.

Professor Gerard Rushton received his BA and MA degrees from the University of Wales, and earned his PhD at the University of Iowa. His research is enhanced by rapid improvements in the quality, coverage and geographic specificity of disease registries and spatial demographic data, as well as developments in methods of small-area analysis. In the past twelve months he has supervised three students at the University of Iowa who have received their doctoral degrees in the medical geography area. Other students are currently working toward their graduate degrees in the field. With a current contract from the National Cancer Institute he and two students have developed a web based cancer mapping program that is currently being tested and validated in an extra-mural research group in NCI and in the New Jersey and Utah cancer registries. He is also an investigator on a translational research in health geography project supported by the Prevention Research Center at the University of Iowa.

In 1999, Gerry received an award for Honors for Distinguished Scholarship in Geography from the Association of American Geographers. “For scholarly contributions to geographical theory and practice concerning revealed space preference, location-allocation modeling, and GIS-related decision support systems, and for applied research in community planning and facility location throughout the world.” He is a member of the NIH review committee on Community Influences on Health Behavior.

Gerry’s web pages may be found at

http://clas.uiowa.edu/geography/people/gerry-rushton

http://www.uiowa.edu/iowacancermaps2

Originally published: January 2009
Modified: May 2013