Nadine Schuurman

Dr. Nadine Schuurman began her career in critical GIScience and morphed into a health geographer over past decade. There are three themes that animate all of her research: spatial access to health services; health surveillance; and the influence of the environment on health events. She uses geographic information systems (GIS) to figure out where pockets of injury and illness occur and why. Once clusters are identified, Schuurman can zoom in on the micro-environmental correlates that might contribute to increased risk. For example, she conducted a study on pedestrian injury hotspots in Vancouver. After locating the top 10 hotspots, her team did detailed environmental scans of each location to determine common environmental features (e.g. alcohol-serving establishments).

In addition, Schuurman is keen to figure out what effect spatial access to health services has on outcomes. The flip side of this puzzle is that we can determine where new health services should optimally be located. Schuurman has an active lab that hosts seven grad students with five PhD students. They work together as a team; this approach has led to a very productive research environment at this unique intersection between health and geography.

Recent Publications

Schuurman, N., Amram, O., Saeedi, J., Rieckmann, P., Yee, I., and Tremlett, H. 2013. A proposed methodology to estimate the cumulative life-time UVB exposure using Geographic Information Systems: an application to multiple sclerosis. Multiple Sclerosis and Related Disorders. 2: 29-35.

Schuurman, N., Cinnamon, J., Matzopolous, R., Fawcett, V. and Hameed, S.M. 2011. Collecting injury surveillance data in low- and middle-income countries: The Cape Town Trauma Registry pilot. Global Public Health. 6(8):874-889.

Schuurman, N. and Randall, E. 2011. A spatial decision support tool for estimating population catchments to aid rural and remote health service allocation planning.”Health Informatics Journal 17(4) 277–293.

Schuurman, N., Crooks, V.A., and Amram, O. 2010. A protocol for determining differences in consistency and depth of palliative care service provision across community sites. Health and Social Care in the Community 18(5): 537-548.

Schuurman, N., Cinnamon, J., Crooks, V.A and Hameed, S.M. 2009. Pedestrian Injury and the Built Environment: an environmental scan of hotspots. BMC Public Health 9:233.