Abstract:Many activities to promote better health and to reduce disease are directed at the changing environments in which people live. In response to the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) 1999 Summer Assembly application challenge, this paper describes the uses of geographic information systems in the field of public health care. With the geographic information system, observations regarding the social, economic, political, and physical environments can be referenced to a common geospatial data framework. This permits varying organizations to share spatial data regarding these phenomena. Geographic information science has the potential to create rich information databases, linked to methods of spatial analysis, to determine relationships between geographical patterns of disease distribution and social and physical environmental conditions. As the core of a decision-support system, geographic information science also has the potential to change the way that allocations of resources are made to facilitate preventive health services and to control the burden of disease.