Spatial Literacy in Public Health:

Spatial literacy—the ability to visualize, understand, and use the properties of space to communicate, reason, and problem-solve—is relevant to public health across disciplines. Spatial Literacy in Public Health: Faculty-Librarian Teaching Collaborations offers ideas and plans for collaborative spatial literacy teaching and learning initiatives focusing on Geographic Information Systems (GIS)-based and GIS-related instruction through the lens of public health topics.
 
Chapters include step-by-step learning activities, teaching tips, recommended readings, and four-color maps and other useful illustrations. These offer ideas that will help build skills and fluency in spatial literacy across many disciplines. Such interdisciplinary topics include supply chain management; temporal comparisons; social media campaigns; data visualization; racial disparities and other demographic themes related to immunization patterns, epidemiology, recreation access, and community health and environmental health/environmental science; and interdisciplinary projects related to education (including K-12).
 
Spatial Literacy in Public Health offers specific plans for spatial literacy instruction and activities in public health across disciplines. Learning activities support open source tools, open educational resources (OER), and other institutional cost-saving initiatives, and the ability to adapt from in-person to virtual instruction settings.

Laureen P. Cantwell-Jurkovic, PhD, MSLIS, is the Head of Access Services & Outreach at Colorado Mesa University’s Tomlinson Library. She co-edited Finding Your Seat at the Table: Roles for Librarians on Institutional Regulatory Boards and Committees (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022) and was sole editor for Intersections in Healing: Academic Libraries and the Health Humanities (Rowman & Littlefield, 2024). She has also published book chapters and articles on topics ranging from librarians on IRBs to libraries and MOOCs, from library spaces as curiosity drivers to Covid-era curbside pickup services, from information literacy activism to digital badging, and more. As part of being liaison to CMU’s Davis School of Business, she works with students and faculty within entrepreneurship, marketing, and other concentrations to bring GIS tools and research opportunities into their lives.
 
Tammy E. Parece, PhD, is an Assistant Professor of Teaching with The Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio where she teaches geospatial technologies to undergraduate and graduate students. She has a Geospatial and Environmental Analysis PhD from Virginia Tech. Her research includes the physical and social evaluations of urban areas for urban agriculture. She has published several book chapters and journal articles, and presented many conference papers, related to urban agriculture. Additionally, she specializes in geographic education, including geospatial technology courses. Her publications include book chapters, journal articles, and several technical and laboratory manuals related to geospatial technology education. She has taught numerous professional development workshops in geospatial technologies. Additionally, she taught at Colorado Mesa University, both traditional geography courses and geospatial technology courses, from 2016 - 2022, and developed their Geography Education and Outreach Program.