2012 SCIENTIFIC MEETING -- SPEAKER BIOS

Sunday:  Research Laureate 

Monday:  Keynote    Session I    Session II

Tuesday: Keynote    Session III    Session IV

Wednesday: Session V    Closing Session   Presidential  Inauguration

Sunday Workshops   Mon-Tues Workshop    

Professional Development Luncheons

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Sunday, March 18

5:30 pm

Opening Session

Dr. Andrea Gielen

 

2012 AAHB Research Laureate

Andrea Carlson Gielen, Sc.D., Sc.M. is Professor in the Department of Health, Behavior and Society and Director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Injury Research and Policy in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and holds joint appointments in the Department of Population, Family and Reproductive Health and the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing.

Dr Geilen teaches courses in program planning for behavior change and behavioral sciences applications to injury and violence prevention.  She has published numerous journal articles on health behavior, health educaiton, and injury prevention topics. In 2006, she was lead editor of an injury textbook, Injury and Violence Prevention: Behavioral Science Theory, Methods and Applications.

Dr. Gielen has almost three decades of public health experience, including as a public health department practitioner and an academic researcher directing numerous federally funded studies of health behaviors and behavior change interventions. Her research at Johns Hopkins has focused on developing and evaluating health education and health promotion programs, including the use of community based participatory research methods. Specific injury issues have included: child passenger safety, child pedestrian injury, bicycle helmet use among children and teens, older drivers, house fires and other home injuries, and domestic violence.  Intervention strategies utilized in this work include stage tailored counseling, computer tailoring for low literacy audiences, enhanced physician communication, safety resource centers, community health worker and community partnered models.  

Dr. Gielen also has served on technical advisory boards and as consultant to a variety of governmental and private national and international organizations.  She recently completed her term as President of the Society for Advancement of Violence and Injury Research (SAVIR) and is currently a Board of Trustees Member of the Society for Public Health Education.

Day 1 Keynote Speaker

"Challenges for Harnessing the Rapidly Changing Informatics Landscape to Promote

Health Behavior Change"

Dr. David Abrams, PhD, is Professor of Health Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and Executive Director, The Schroeder Institute for Tobacco Research and Policy Studies at Legacy. Former Director, Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences Research (OBSSR) at NIH, Dr. Abrams is a clinical health psychologist. He has published numerous scholarly articles and been a Principal or Co‐Investigator on 65 grants, including a National Cancer Institute (NCI) Program Project award for a Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center (TTURC). Dr. Abrams is lead author of The Tobacco Dependence Treatment Handbook: A Guide to Best Practices, a recipient of a book of the year award. He was a member of the Board of Scientific Advisors of the National Cancer Institute, served on the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Transdisciplinary Tobacco Etiology Research Network, and several Institute of Medicine expert committees including on Ending the Tobacco Problem: A Blueprint for the Nation. Dr. Abrams received the Joseph Cullen Memorial Award from the American Society for Preventive Oncology for lifetime contributions to tobacco control. He was President of the Society for Behavioral Medicine and a recipient of their Distinguished Scientist and Mentorship awards. 

Dr. Abrams provides scientific leadership in tobacco control by embracing transdisciplinary and translational research strategies. Systems integration is arguably the single most critical missing ingredient needed to maximize the unrealized potential to significantly reduce tobacco use prevalence. Specifically, Dr. Abrams explores ways to put what we know into widespread practice and policy to make an efficient impact on the population especially using new informatics and communications technology and computational simulation modeling. He has extensive experience in testing theory, in research design, and in the measurement of mechanisms of behavior change and outcomes.  Since 2009, he has focused on the role research can play in informing the regulatory decisions of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products. This includes coordinating development of a strategic research agenda to inform FDA, convening expert thought leaders, and conducting rapid research and providing knowledge synthesis in areas of FDA priority such as examining mentholated cigarettes in public health, reduced harm products, e-cigarettes, and public perceptions of potential FDA regulations.

Session I

Social Media and Online Health

"Behavior, outcomes, and opportunistic interventions in online health programs

and communities"

Kevin O. Hwang, MD, MPH pulled countless all-nighters while studying Biochemistry and English at Rice University and made thousands of color-coded flash cards while studying medicine at The University of Texas Medical Branch. He completed his internal medicine residency in the bowels of Morristown Memorial Hospital. Thereafter he completed a fellowship in primary care research and received his Master of Public of Health degree in health promotion and behavioral sciences at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Keeping a promise to his wife to “get a real job,” he joined the faculty at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston. His chief research and clinical interests are in obesity and health screening, with a focus on how novel communication strategies can be used to influence behavior. His research has addressed topics such as online peer support for weight loss and colorectal cancer screening.

Sheana Bull, PhD., is a Professor with the Colorado School of Public Health, Department of Community and Behavioral Health. Dr. Bull has directed numerous research projects exploring the utility of delivering sexual health interventions (including pregnancy prevention and prevention of HIV and other STI) via the Internet, Cell phones and social media and published numerous articles as well as a book on the subject, Technology Based Health Promotion (Sage, 2010). Her recently completed study using Facebook for the delivery of sexual health education enrolled over 1500 youth and shows promise for improvements in sexual health behavior in the short-term.  Dr. Bull served as PI on the first randomized controlled trial funded by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) to develop and test an Internet-based intervention designed for youth to prevent HIV (called Youthnet, R01MH63690), which employed theory based role model stories delivered using flash, audio and music as feedback to youth entered data on the Internet about their HIV related risk.  Dr. Bull is currently the PI on the Online Social Networking for HIV Prevention (R01NR010492), which seeks to develop and test an HIV Prevention intervention on the Social Networking site, Facebook. Dr. Bull is collaborating with a team of researchers in Uganda, who are exploring the efficacy of using the Internet to deliver comprehensive sexuality education to Secondary School students in Mbarara Uganda.  Finally, Dr. Bull is the lead evaluator on a study exploring the use of cell phones to supplement an effective youth development initiative. The project is funded by the Office of Adolescent Health, and aims to explore whether supplementing a weekly one hour group support curriculum on service learning will intensify and sustain program outcomes related to avoiding teen pregnancy and school drop-out. 

Session II

The Mobile Health Revolution: Applications and Implications for Health Behavior Research

"Leveraging mobile technologies to

measure and improve health behaviors"

Kevin Patrick, MD, MS, is a Professor in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, UCSD Editor-in-Chief, American Journal of Preventive Medicine, and Director of the Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems.  His research focuses on the use of information and telecommunications technology to measure and improve health-related behaviors of individuals and populations. He is a Senior Advisor to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Active Living Research program and a member of the National Advisory Committee of the RWJF Health Games Research initiative. He has served on the Secretary’s Council for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention of the US Department of Health and Human Services and on the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board.  Dr. Patrick is Co-founder of Santech, Inc. of San Diego, California, which is developing web and mobile systems for health promotion and wellness.

Paul Estabrooks, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Human Nutrition, Food, & Exercise and the Director of the Translational Obesity Research Program at Virginia Tech. He has written extensively and has earned numerous research awards, been funded continuously from the National Institute of Health since 1999, and is a Society of Behavioral Medicine Fellow. He is an Associate Editor of Health Psychology and involved in many projects which apply research to practice in areas such as sustainable community physical activity programs, diabetes prevention group physical activity and nutrition practices, clinical physical activity promotion, and the application of behavioral theory to reducing sugar sweetened beverage consumption. Dr. Estabrooks uses interactive technologies for both patient assessment and intervention.

Audie Atienza, PhD currently serves as Senior Health Technology Advisor at the Department of Health and Human Services, Office of the Secretary; and as a Behavioral Scientist at the National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute.  At HHS, Dr. Atienza led the Text4Health Task Force that provided recommendations on health text messaging/mobile health to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, and is currently collaborating with the White House on the Apps Against Abuse developer’s challenge to encourage the development of innovative technology to help prevent sexual assault among young adults.  He received his bachelor's degree from the University of California at San Diego in 1991 and obtained his doctorate in Clinical Psychology from Kent State University in 1998.  He completed his clinical internship as a Behavioral Medicine Specialist (with Neuropsychology and Family Therapy rotations) at the Palo Alto Veterans Administration Health Care System.  Dr. Atienza was then selected as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Prevention Research Center.  At NIH, Dr. Atienza has spearheaded research endeavors in electronic health (eHealth), mobile technology and health (mHealth), and real-time data capture, including serving as chair/organizer of national conferences: “The Science of Real-Time Data Capture” conference (Sept 2003), “Capturing Physical Activity and Diet in Real-Time” expert panel workshop (June 2004), “Critical Issues in eHealth Research” national conference (June 2005), and  “Critical Issues in eHealth Research: Toward Quality Patient Centered Care” national conference (September 2006). He led NIH’s effort in organizing the 2010 mHealth Summit (November 2010).  He has over 50 peer-reviewed papers published in scientific journals, and has edited/co-edited several publications focused on technology and health.

Tuesday Keynote Speaker

 "Health Technology Promise or Peril:

A View of Meaningful Use from

the Consumers' Perspective"

David Ahern, MD is the Director of the Health Information Technology Resource Center (HITRC) based at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston for Aligning Forces for Quality, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation^® providing 16 current active communities across the U.S. with technical assistance and guidance to leverage the near term value of health information technology to improve health care quality.  In addition, Dr. Ahern is the Director of the Program in Behavioral Informatics and eHealth within the Department of Psychiatry at the Brigham & Women’s Hospital.  The Program in Behavioral Informatics and eHealth was created to advance research in at the intersection of behavioral science, technology, and the evaluation and treatment of mental health disorders.  Dr. Ahern is an Assistant Professor of Psychology (Psychiatry) at Harvard Medical School.  He received his doctorate from Nova Southeastern University and completed internship at the Brown University Internship Consortium. Dr. Ahern has had a distinguished career in clinical research in behavioral medicine and behavioral informatics and eHealth.  He has published over 80 original articles in the areas of chronic pain, psychosocial aspects of musculoskeletal disorders, cardiovascular behavioral medicine, and eHealth research. He has held investigator roles on numerous research grants and contracts funded by multiple agencies including the Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Dr. Ahern served a three year term on the Board of Scientific Counselors, National Center for Health Marketing, Federal Advisory Committee of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Dr. Ahern also holds the position of Senior Scientist for Abacus Management Technologies based in Rhode Island.

Session III

BJ Fogg, PhD, directs the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University. A psychologist and innovator, he devotes at least half of his time to industry projects. His work empowers people to think clearly about the psychology of persuasion — and then to convert those insights into real-world outcomes.

BJ has created a new model of human behavior change, which guides research and design. Outside of Stanford BJ teaches how to apply behavior change insights in a new series of Persuasion Boot Camps.

He is the founder and director of Mobile Health at Stanford, an event that highlights what really works to improve health behavior. Of all behavior change types, daily health habits is BJ's primary interests.

He is the author of Persuasive Technology: Using Computers to Change What We Think and Do, a book that explains how computers can motivate and influence people. BJ is also the co-editor of Mobile Persuasion, as well as Texting 4 Health. Fortune Magazine selected him as a “New Guru You Should Know.”

Tuesday, March 20

10:30 AM -11:45 AM

Dr. Christopher Fulcher

Ellen LaPointe, JD

Session IV

Christopher Fulcher, PhD, is a faculty member in the Division of Applied Social Sciences and the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri – Columbia, where he co-directs the Center for Applied Research and Environmental Systems (CARES).  CARES has a long history of developing and implementing Internet-based Custom Learning Systems to assist decision makers, researchers, organizations and underserved, under-resourced communities.  The center’s decision support framework requires ongoing monitoring and updating of existing datasets as well as identifying and incorporating additional datasets. These datasets, which include socio-economic, demographic, health, education, political, and environmental data, serve as a distinctive foundation for addressing a myriad of public policy issues.  Dr. Fulcher’s applied research focuses on developing and implementing social innovations for strategic planning and decision support. His systems-based approach to decision making enables local, state, national and international public and nonprofit sector organizations to effectively address social issues using unique collaborative management systems.  Dr. Fulcher and his team integrate emerging computer technologies including geographic information systems, data visualization, community engagement tools and Internet accessibility to better serve vulnerable and underserved populations.  These web-based technologies help organizations and policy makers make more informed decisions about access, equity, and allocation of resources.

Ellen LaPointe, JD, is Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for HopeLab.  Ellen is responsible for developing strategic private and public sector partnerships to increase HopeLab’s institutional resources, leverage the impact of HopeLab’s innovative solutions, and raise awareness of HopeLab’s work among thought leaders, policymakers, and other key stakeholders.  In her role, she has cultivated successful partnerships with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Starlight Children's Foundation, the Lance Armstrong Foundation, the Entertainment Software Association Foundation, CIGNA HealthCare, and Vivendi, among others.  These partnerships have been key drivers have been key drives of the success of Re-Mission (a video game for teens and young adults with cancer)(RE-MISSION), and early development of Zamzee (ZAMZEE), and other HopeLab Initiatives.

Ellen speaks widely at national and international conferences and regularly briefs thought leaders and policy makers on HopeLab’s innovative, evidence-based approach to utilizing technology to improve kids’ health. She has extensive experience in organizational leadership, strategy development and implementation, partnership cultivation, fund development, communications, financial management, and program oversight. Before joining HopeLab, Ellen served as Executive Director of Project Inform, a national non-profit AIDS treatment information and advocacy organization. Prior to that, she was an attorney at a large law firm in San Francisco and Director of Clinical Research at Saint Francis Memorial Hospital, also in San Francisco.

Ellen received her B.A., magna cum laude, in Community Health from Brown University and her J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt School of Law.

Wednesday, March 21

8:30-10:30 AM

Dr. Susan Woods

Dr. Brad Hesse

Session V

SESSION TITLE NEEDED

Susan S. Woods, MD, MPH, is a general internist and researcher at the Portland VA Medical Center and faculty at Oregon Health & Science University, Departments of Medicine and Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology. At the Veterans Health Administration, she serves as Associate National Director eHealth in the Office of Informatics & Analytics. Previously, she was the Director of the Center for Tobacco Independence, MaineHealth, in Portland, Maine. This Center has been a national model for the comprehensive treatment and statewide integration of tobacco treatment into clinical services. Susan focuses on enhancing patient-clinician communication and the use and impact of personal health records and patient-facing health IT. As a champion of using technology to practice participatory medicine, she believes patient and family access to health information and services are critical to improve the patient experience and improve health. She encourages disruptive health system change including consumer transparency and full access to health information on her Shared Health Data blog.

Brad Hesse, PhD is Chief of the National Cancer Institute's Health Communication and Informatics Research Branch.  Dr. Hesse received his degree in social psychology from the University of Utah in 1988 with an accompanying internship in the nascent field of medical informatics.  After completing his degree, he served as a postdoctoral fellow within the Department of Social and Decision Sciences at Carnegie Mellon University.  For more than two decades since that time, he has been conducting research in the interdisciplinary fields of social cognition, health communication, health informatics, and user-centered design.  Dr. Hesse was recruited to the National Cancer Institute in 2003 and has since been focusing his energies on bringing the power of evidence-based health communication to bear on the problem of eliminating death and suffering from cancer.  He continues to direct the Health Information National Trends Survey, a biennial general population survey aimed at monitoring the public’s use of health information during a period of enhanced capacity at the crest of the information revolution; and he serves as program director for the Centers of Excellence in Cancer Communication Research, a cutting-edge research initiative aimed at expanding the knowledge base underlying effective cancer communication strategies.   Dr. Hesse has authored or co-authored approximately 150 publications, including peer-reviewed journal articles, technical reports, books, and book chapters. In 2009, his coauthored book titled “Making Data Talk: Communicating Public Health Data to the Public, Policy Makers, and the Press” was named Book of the Year by the American Journal of Nursing.

Closing PANEL Session

Herbert Severson, PhD, is a Senior Scientist at Oregon Research Institute and retired as a Professor of Counseling Psychology at the University of Oregon in June 2003.  He is a licensed psychologist with over 35 years of experience in intervention and prevention research, a proven track record in conducting school-based, applied research, and has published extensively in professional journals.  He directed the School Psychology and Counseling Psychology Programs at the University of Oregon and has been Director of the Oregon Research Institute.  Since 1979, Dr. Severson has been an investigator on 30 National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants researching the development and evaluation of tobacco prevention and cessation.  His present research involves the evaluation of smokeless tobacco (ST) and smoking cessation programs as well as evaluating the potential use of smokeless tobacco for smoking cessation in a harm reduction model.  In addition to Dr. Severson’s tobacco research, he has worked since 1985 on research projects related to early screening and interventions for aggressive behavior in young children.  He is an author of chapters in the 1986 (Health Consequences of Using Smokeless Tobacco), 1994 (Preventing Tobacco Use Among Young People), and 2001 (Women and Smoking) Surgeon General Reports, and the update of the 1994 report (in press).  He was an author of a report by the Institute of Medicine, Growing Up Tobacco Free: Preventing Nicotine Addiction in Children and Youths.  In addition to many articles in professional journals, Dr. Severson has authored numerous books and over 30 video and computer programs on tobacco prevention and cessation.  He has recently developed interactive CD-ROM based training program for oral health professionals (Helping Your Patients Quit Tobacco), and two computer based interactive tobacco prevention programs for middle school students (Tobacco Zero and Tobacco World).  He is an active member of several professional societies.  Dr. Severson has been elected a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Divisions 16 & 38), the Society of Behavioral Medicine, and was the recipient of the Research Laureate Award from the American Academy of Health Behavior in 2006.

Outgoing AAHB  President

Elaine A. Borawski, Ph.D. holds the Angela Bowen Williamson Professorship of Community Nutrition in the Departments of Epidemiology and Biostatistics and Nutrition in the School of Medicine at Case Western Reserve University.  She is also the PI and Co-Director of the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods and Co-Director of the Community Engagement Core of the Clevealnd CTSA.  Trained as a medical sociologist, with postdoctoral training in public health and epidemiology, Dr. Borawski has nearly 20 years of experience in community-based health research with a focus on school and neighborhood level interventions, health behavior surveillance, and survey development and design. She has served as a PI and Co-I on over a dozen NIH and CDC funded, longitudinal studies aimed at reducing adolescent risk behavior (obesity prevention through physical activity and nutrition, tobacco prevention, STD/HIV prevention). She is currently one of three PIs of a $12.5 million, seven-year NHLBI funded childhood obesity study that intervenes with overweight and obese teens through a multi-level (individual, family, school, neighborhood) intervention.  She leads the PRCHN, which focuses primarily on food environment and nutrition policy, obesity prevention, tobacco prevention and control, and school health issues.  The PRCHN conducts and manages the local Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (adults) and the Youth Risk Behavior Survey, and has served as the lead evaluator for dozens of community-level health initiatives on pregnancy prevention, tobacco prevention and control, physical activity and nutrition, asthma and diabetes management, and obesity prevention and treatment.  

Incoming AAHB President

R. Scott Olds, HSD, MS, MLIS is a Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. He has been involved in a variety of public health research and evaluation programs including working at the Office on Smoking and Health at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention where he provided assistance with data analysis of a global tobacco surveillance program initiated by the World Health Organization; providing assessment assistance for county health departments and social service agencies; researching college student alcohol use through innovative web and breath alcohol use technologies supported by state and federal grants; evaluating local tobacco prevention and control programs; serving as a team member in the development of the Ohio Tobacco Research and Evaluation Center; participating in a multi-disciplinary research team to deliver a county child obesity assessment and prevention program; directing a substance abuse monitoring system which has provided data collection, analysis and report writing to ten districts with over 10,000 students participating; and providing technical assistance to the development of a county data warehouse to facilitate data sharing and utility for local public health professionals.

Sunday, March 18

1:30-4:30 PM

Dr. Sheana Bull

Sponsored by:

There is an additional

charge ($50 members and

students; $75 non-members)

for this workshop.

Limited seats, reserve early.

Pre-Conference Research Workshop

Enhancing Your Interventions and

Research Using Social Media

This 3-hour workshop will introduce attendees to the uses of Social Media in health research, including the use of social media to enhance recruitment for research; to deliver content, and to facilitate data collection. In addition, strategies for engagement of online audiences using social media, and consider current limitations to the use of social media for research, including ethical issues related to privacy and control of information will be presented. The workshop will include opportunities for attendees to develop and share their own ideas for integration of social media into their health related research.

Sheana Bull, PhD., is a Professor with the Colorado School of Public Health, Department of Community and Behavioral Health. Dr. Bull has directed numerous research projects exploring the utility of delivering sexual health interventions (including pregnancy prevention and prevention of HIV and other STI) via the Internet, Cell phones and social media and published numerous articles as well as a book on the subject, Technology Based Health Promotion (Sage, 2010). Her recently completed study using Facebook for the delivery of sexual health education enrolled over 1500 youth and shows promise for improvements in sexual health behavior in the short-term. 

Monday, March 20

2:00-5:00 PM

Dr. Erika Trapl

Mr. Ryan Kofron

Sponsored by:

Prevention Research Center for

Healthy Neighborhoods

CTSC Behavioral Science

Measurement Core

Case Western Reserve University

There is an additional

charge ($50 members and

students; $75 non-members)

for this workshop.

Limited seats, reserve early.

Optional Research Workshop

 Upgrade Your Data Collection Methods

Integrating Electronic Data Tools for Improving Data Quality, Integrity and Usage

This 3-hour workshop will provide interactive discussion and hands on demonstration of various electronic technologies and how they can impact data collection, quality and integrity, with particular focus on handheld computers (e.g. PDAs) and tablet computers (e.g. iPads, Acer), as well as discussion of the advantages and disadvantages of using electronic tools in research protocols.

Erika Trapl, PhD, is an Assistant Professor in Epidemiology and Biostatistics at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, the Associate Director of the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods  and the Director of the Survey Development Lab within the CTSC Behavioral Science Measurement Core.  She completed her PhD in Epidemiology with a focus on health behavior and statistical methodology.  Dr. Trapl is an expert in the development of surveys and data collection tools, with specific expertise using audio-enhanced personal digital assistants (PDAs) and tablet PCs.  She has over ten years of experience in developing surveys, data collection tools, and protocols for complex, federally funded studies of youth, both in and out of schools, as well as adults in non-traditional settings. 

Ryan Kofron, MSSA, is the Manager of Assessment and Research Technology for the Prevention Research Center for Healthy Neighborhoods at Case Western Reserve University.  He completed his Masters in Social Science Administration with a concentration in community development and a certificate in nonprofit management and has been working at the Center since 2008. While at the Center, Mr. Kofron has coordinated evaluation efforts for several research projects and has developed new and innovative data collection methods utilizing available and emerging technologies.  As acting manager of the Survey Development Lab, he has developed a wide array of data collection tools on a variety of platforms including PDAs, iPads and tablets.  He works directly Dr. Trapl and all SDL Clients, maintaining regular contact and providing technical assistance whenever needed. 

The Survey Development Lab at Case Western Reserve University has been assisting faculty, students, local non-profits and government agencies facilitate survey design, measurement and data collection for nearly 4 years.  Together, Dr. Trapl and Mr. Kofron have developed data collections tools on a wide range of projects, including an audio-enhanced, tablet-based food frequency questionnaire for English and Spanish-speaking migrant farmworkers; a statewide, online survey of prenatal care providers to assess practices related to gestational diabetes;  a county-wide, multi-mode (online, paper) survey to assess community quality of life; and an audio-enhanced, tablet-based computer with special formatting and tactile indictors for use by people with visual impairments.

Monday, March 19

and

Tuesday, March 20

2:00-5:00 PM

(6 hour workshop)

Dr. Chris Fulcher

Workshop Sponsored by:

Center for Applied Research and Environmental Systems

(CARES)

There is an additional

charge ($150 members and

students; $200 non-members)

for this workshop.

Limited seats, reserve early.

Optional Research Workshop

"The Roles of Internet and Desktop GIS for Place-based Analysis and Data Visualization" (6 hour workshop)

The Center for Applied Research and Environmental Systems (CARES) at the University of Missouri has a long history of developing and implementing internet-based GIS applications to assist decision makers,researchers, organizations and underserved/under-resourced communities. The Center’s decision support framework requires ongoing monitoring and regular updating of over 7,000 datasets as well as identifying and incorporating additional datasets. These datasets, which include socio-economic, demographic, health, education, political, and environmental data, serve as a distinctive foundation for research, public policy, and advocacy.

The publicly available GIS Engine and associated "CARES Public Data” includes thousands of National Source GIS Data Layers that have been added and maintained since the center launched its "CARES Map Room" in 2000. This public good utility was developed and implemented by CARES to further its "Systems Thinking" approach of making public data publicly accessible for all communities in the US as easy-to-understand data visualizations (maps, reports, charts, dashboards, animations). Datasets are updated monthly, quarterly, annually or as often as the source data is made available.

This workshop will cover three main topic areas:

• Overview of GIS, data integration and data visualization (1.5 hrs/Day 1);
• An introduction to the publicly available CARES GIS Engine and associated databases for downloading data for offline analyses (1.5 hrs/Day 1);
• An introduction to integrating local and regional data with CARES-provided data for conducting spatial analyses using a free mapping desktop GIS (3 hrs/Day 2).

The workshop will be interactive and include facilitated discussion for each of the three topic areas.

Registered participants will receive an email ahead of the meeting asking them to download the free mapping software to their laptops. Please bring your laptop to the session. If you do not have a laptop you may partner with a participant that does have a laptop.

Christopher Fulcher, PhD, is a faculty member in the Division of Applied Social Sciences and the Harry S. Truman School of Public Affairs at the University of Missouri – Columbia, where he co-directs the Center for Applied Research and Environmental Systems (CARES).  CARES has a long history of developing and implementing Internet-based Custom Learning Systems to assist decision makers, researchers, organizations and underserved, under-resourced communities.  The center’s decision support framework requires ongoing monitoring and updating of existing datasets as well as identifying and incorporating additional datasets. These datasets, which include socio-economic, demographic, health, education, political, and environmental data, serve as a distinctive foundation for addressing a myriad of public policy issues.  Dr. Fulcher’s applied research focuses on developing and implementing social innovations for strategic planning and decision support. His systems-based approach to decision making enables local, state, national and international public and nonprofit sector organizations to effectively address social issues using unique collaborative management systems.  Dr. Fulcher and his team integrate emerging computer technologies including geographic information systems, data visualization, community engagement tools and Internet accessibility to better serve vulnerable and underserved populations.  These web-based technologies help organizations and policy makers make more informed decisions about access, equity, and allocation of resources.

Dr. Mathew Smith