Annual Conference

Geospatial Health Research Symposium @AAG

Every year, the HMGSG team presents the Geospatial Health Research Symposium at the AAG Annual Conference. In this symposium, we bring together national and international scholars, practitioners, and policy makers from different specialties, institutions, sectors, and continents to share ideas, findings, methodologies, and technologies, and to establish and strengthen personal connections, communication channels, and research collaborations. 

Symposium Topics

We welcome papers on all aspects of health and wellbeing, as well as health and medical geography and their intersections with other branches of geography, GIScience, and other disciplines. Topics may include but are not limited to: 

Environmental Health 

  • Representation and measurement of contextual or environmental influences 
  • EcoGeographic genetic epidemiology: gene-environment interactions 
  • Disease ecologies

Climate Change and health

  • Infectious diseases and their relations to climate change 
  • Climate change and mental health
  • Vulnerable groups and places
  • Climate events and planning

Devices and technologies for measuring mobility and environmental exposures 

  • Mobilities and health 
  • Linkage of GPS data, imagery, video, air monitor, accelerometry 
  • Assessment of environmental exposures

Healthcare Services

  • Accessibility of healthcare services and its optimization 
  • Healthcare provision, access, and utilization 
  • Health disparities and inequalities 
  • Global health research and public health initiatives

Novel Methodologies 

  • CyberGIS and high performance computing in health studies 
  • Geospatial big data and health 
  • Crowd sourcing of geospatial data for health research (including twitter) 
  • Novel (geo)visualization methods 
  • mHealth and global health service delivery initiatives 

Joining the Symposium

Calls for papers will go out in the fall, generally due by October. You don’t have to be a member of HMGSG to join, but you will need to be registered as an AAG member and conference registered.

To participate in the Symposium at the AAG Annual Meeting, please submit your abstract to AAG. When you receive confirmation of a successful abstract submission, please forward this confirmation to the symposium organizers and let us know whether your talk will be in-person or virtual.

We also accept session and panel submissions. Please submit the title of your session or panel and type (virtual or in-person). Upon acceptance, further instructions will be sent to officially become part of the Symposium. 

Please contact the symposium organizers if you have any questions.

AAG 2027 at New York City

The next symposium will be at the AAG Annual Meeting in New York City, February 8-12, 2027. It will be co-chaired by Drs. Marynia Kolak (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) and Jessica Finlay (University of Colorado at Boulder), with support by the members of the HMGSG board.