Join us at the AAG Annual Meeting in New York City on February 8-12, 2027 for the annual Geospatial Health Research Symposium!
Overview
Every year, the GHSRS hosted by the Health & Medical Geography Specialty Group convenes scholars and practitioners from different specialties, institutions, sectors, and continents to share ideas, findings, methodologies, and technologies, establish and strengthen personal connections, and foster research collaborations.
We welcome papers on multiple aspects of health and wellbeing, as well as health and medical geography and its intersections with other branches of geography, GIScience, spatial epidemiology, and other disciplines.
We are seeking specific featured sessions on core health and medical geography topics and contemporary challenges in local or global settings:
Geographies of Health
- Deep dives into the geographies of specific dimensions of health and well-being (e.g., aging, diabetes, mental health)
- Structural drivers and social determinants of health from a spatial perspective
- Spatial evaluation of health interventions
Climate Change & Environmental Context
- Assessments of extreme heat, pollution, disasters, and hazards on health
- Environmental justice and health, discussions on defining “vulnerability”
- Examining adaptation strategies and their impacts on health
- Disease ecologies
Access to Care & Healthcare Services
- Healthcare provision, utilization, optimization, and gap analyses
- Facilitators and barriers to health(care); multidimensional views of access
- Health disparities and inequalities
Critical Perspectives in Health & Medical Geography
- Defining, expanding, and refining disciplinary boundaries
- Integrating and reimagining critical theories for specialized topics
Novel Geospatial Methods & Technologies
- Mobility dynamics, mobile methods, GPS tracking, and socio-spatial networks
- Health web applications, dynamic dashboards, modern GeoViz
- Advances in spatial statistics, spatial ML, and GeoAI for health
- Community-based participatory research, participatory GIS, co-produced health research
This year, we will limit the Geospatial Health Research Symposium to five core paper sessions that are open to submissions. These will work in concert with featured award sessions of the HMGSG experience at AAG (e.g., Melinda Meade Lecture, Peter Gould and Jacques May Sessions, Emerging & Mid-Career Scholar Sessions). We encourage early submissions to the Geospatial Health Symposium for consideration!
This session is organized by Marynia Kolak (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Jessica Finlay (University of Colorado Boulder) & the Health & Medical Geography Specialty Group Board.
Submission Process
To submit your paper for consideration please do the following:
- Submit your abstract at https://aag.secure-platform.com/aag2025.
- Upon abstract confirmation, record your “Abstract Code” number.
- Complete the Geospatial Health Symposium Form (https://forms.gle/HUULXkYNYXmPGSZU7), and indicate your preference for the session topic. Add your Abstract Code.
Submissions are due by October 15th. Notification will be shared by October 25th. If your talk is not selected for the Symposium, you may move your abstract to a different session by November 2nd, the AAG Session Deadline.
Alt: Get Your Session Sponsored by HMGSG
In addition to the Symposium series, the HMGSG team will feature sessions sponsored by HMGSG with additional social media callouts, listserv reminders, and inclusion in our membership newsletter. So if you don’t participate in the Symposium Series, please consider joining or organizing a session that will be featured across HMGSG!
Developing a session with colleagues can be a rewarding way to build community around a shared topic. Whether you’re organizing independently or with collaborators, here are some tips:
- Send out a call for papers through the listserv, featuring a specific topic of interest to health and medical geographers. Provide ideas for paper topics that fit the session theme. Include contact information for expressions of interest.
- Feel free to “cold call” or email potential collaborators, especially if they are in earlier stages of research — trust us, it works, and that’s how friendships are made! Ask if they’d like to co-chair a session, or submit a paper.
- Provide a deadline for when submissions of interest are due, and a deadline for when you’ll get back to folks. Keep AAG deadlines in mind.
- Use the AAG Session Portal to develop your session and add the accepted presenters, using AAG guidelines as necessary.
Once you’ve finalized a session concept and have presenters confirmed, identify potential sponsors. Consider HMGSG for health & related topics, Cartography Specialty Group for map-making, Spatial Analysis & Modeling, GIS, etc. All these groups are seeking more cross-listed co-sponsorships to demonstrate their connections across geography as a discipline. For HMGSG, as long as the topic is related to health and/or medical geography, we are happy to sponsor your session (i.e. no email is needed).
Please contact the symposium organizers if you have any questions!
