“I Wisely Started with a Map: An Introduction to Geospatial Public Health”

Speaker:

Sean Young, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Public Health
O'Donnell School of Public Health
UT Southwestern Medical Center

About Sean Young:

Dr. Young is a medical geographer interested in human-environment interactions (broadly defined) as they relate to public health. He holds a bachelor's degree in geography from Brigham Young University, where he graduated magna cum laude. He earned a master's degree in geography from the University of Arkansas, and completed his doctoral degree in geography at the University of Iowa.
 

Dr. Young's research attempts to identify the spatiotemporal patterns and trends created by these interactions. With a strong quantitative background in GIS and remote sensing, he applies spatial statistics and geospatial modeling to uncover relationships between the environment and health outcomes across both space and time. Incorporating population, behavior, and environmental characteristics, his work extends across a number of diseases and health topics such as COVID-19, influenza, various cancers and screening programs, the opioid epidemic, environmental exposures, and spatial accessibility modeling. The focus of his current and future research is to explore how complex interactions between people and their environments impact disease outcomes and spatial health disparities.

Dr. Young joined the faculty of UT Southwestern in 2023. Prior to that, he worked in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arkansas. He previously held roles at University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, and the Univesity of Iowa.