David Haynes II is an Assistant Professor with the Institute for Health Informatics at University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and a health geographer who uses cutting-edge spatial analysis methods to advance knowledge of health and cancer disparities.
David was interviewed for GeoHipster by Mike Dolbow.
Q: You got your undergrad degree in Biology, then a Master’s in GIS shortly after. I’ve met people who have taken all kinds of different roads to discover GIS, but I think a biology degree is a new one. So tell our readers, how did you get started in geospatial?
A: I went to a small liberal arts college in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, (Coe College). When I originally went to school I thought I was going to be a medical doctor, so I took a lot of biology courses. I was generally interested in human and environmental biology. It was in an environmental biology course that a professor offered me a summer research position. She had heard that I was good with computers and needed some help analyzing GPS locations. That was my first real experience with “GIS and Geography”. We were running Arc 3.1 and I started playing with AML / Avenue. It was a very cool experience and led to me going to St. Mary’s in Winona, MN for my master’s in GIS.
Q: You and I crossed paths by working with some mutual colleagues in the Health disciplines. We both know that where someone lives, commutes, and works can have huge impacts on their health, but sometimes I’ve found the area to be relatively slow to adopt spatial technologies. Have you found the same, and if so, do you feel like you’re constantly selling the business case?
A: So the medical field like every field goes in waves. 20+ years ago there was the idea of the environment being a factor for causing negative health outcomes. However, GIS was just at its beginning for the broader community and much of that literature showed that the scale of analysis was critical for determining that. So health went away from that to personal behaviors and thinking that was the main cause. We are at a point now, we know that if we control for many of these personal demographic characteristics (age, race, sex), we still see large gaps or disparities. We hypothesize that the environment could explain the disparities. However, the environment now needs to be more specifically defined which is causing a headache for everyone. Most researchers approach this from the traditional epi point of view and try to add spatial on at the end. So I spend much of my time on studies that want to add spatial to them. Not many studies start with spatial as the primary focus.
Q: It does seem like the field of ‘health geography’ is growing. Can you tell us what it’s like, in your experience?
A: Yes, I think the ability to use smart devices is going to make Geography extremely important in designing interventions. I am thinking of designing a study for smoking cessation that would send you SMS notifications if you are in a business that sells tobacco.
Q: How would you describe “health geo-informatics”? Is this just another way to say spatial (or GIS)?
A: Yeah, pretty much. I think my focus is to make health spatial and to integrate more sophisticated spatial analyses that most researchers wouldn’t.
Q: You were once a rugby player. I don’t know much about the sport, but it appears to me to be a lot like soccer and American football: where an awareness of space, angles, and boundaries is an advantage. Did you ever think of it like that? Ever map your games?
A: Funny, Yes. I want to teach a class one day call the “Geography of Sport”. Actually all sports are about Geography. You have a limited defined extent in which you have to operate. In many classic team sports (i.e., football, basketball, hockey, etc.), the goal for the defense is to limit the space and time for different players. If a QB is throwing the football they need time and the receivers make the pass easier by creating distance between themselves and the defenders. Staying with football, every defense seeks to limit potential areas of the field while leaving other areas open. The offense tries to exploit these areas. I could go on all day about this as I really enjoy watching sports from a geographic perspective. One last thing, this is why the prevent defense in football gets no credit. The prevent defense is to prevent a touchdown on the hail mary pass not prevent the Tom Brady 5-10 yard passes. Defensive Coordinators need to develop new defenses that use a mixture of man to man with zone to be more effective in the 2 minutes offense.
Q: In Minnesota, we have a saying that there are only two seasons: winter, and construction. But you’re into aquaponics and sustainable gardening. Isn’t there a gardening analogy to that, like, “weeding and canning”?
A: Yeah, aquaponics is a labor of annoyance. It always starts out great and then something breaks two weeks later. But mostly I’m dreaming farmer. I read the book “5 Acres & a Dream” and was hooked. One day, that’s what I want to do. I’d be more of a hobby farmer in the day and do some serious programming at night.
Q: What do you think of some of the indoor, urban, industrial agriculture systems that are cropping up, sometimes as CSAs? Given the rising environmental costs of shipping, and unpredictable climate we’re facing, this seems to me like something we need to invest in more as a society. But can aquaponics really save the world?
A: Realistically, I think it’s a part of the solution. It won’t save the world, but it would improve some things like the food supply chain. Every year there are 10 e-coli outbreaks related to vegetables. This isn’t going to change. But this might be an area where aquaponics could help. I have grand ideas of how aquaponics could be used to provide benefits to society. Mostly, I do it to help my kids understand where food comes from and what waste is. I like aquaponics because it recycles the water and is kind of a closed-loop system, although I feed the fish. But I think getting people familiar with the idea of how an ideal nature system could operate would help us. It is an opportunity to learn more about ecosystems and how plants, animals, and people can all interact in a sustainable way.
Q: I’m not sure how much you know about GeoHipster, but you’re a big PostGIS user in a nascent field – which makes you different than a lot of people I know, but more like some of the “geohipsters” I’ve met. So what do you think, might you be a geohipster?
A: After re-reading your definition, I would definitely be a geohipster. Geography and using GIS in the broader health world isn’t new, but it is really in demand right now and this trend will likely continue for at least 5-10 years. I’d also say, like many of the geohipsters you have interviewed that I am a big advocate for spatial and try to help people understand why spatial is important.
I’d say I’m a big spatial database advocate. I tend to use a variety of tools that fit the need of the project. Which I think is the mantra of your GeoHipster definition poll. I think industries and the medical world tend to be OK with the installation of a validated commercial software. However, that can take weeks or months. They always seem to have a database around and if you can move data into that they seem to roll with it. Databases just seem safe. Plus I think the ability to scale analyses out in databases is easier than programming. But you need to know how to program if you’re working with big data.
Q: You’ve got a year or more of teaching under your belt. What career advice would you give to your students – or to our readers?
A: If you are into Geography that is great, and if you are just coming into GIS I feel sorry and excited for you. The GIS field is really changing, which can be daunting at first. When I came into Geography there was a general feeling that you could learn ArcGIS and get a job. You could learn a second proprietary software and be set for life. Programming was something you could do, but wasn’t necessary. That has all changed for me and any future students.
Google Maps, MapBox, OpenStreet Map, Uber, Lyft. etc have all changed this. We are truly embracing the big data and computational science revolution. This means that you need to have mid-level understanding of computer science. You need to know how to program in an Object Oriented Language for either front end or back end. I would tend to recommend students or new people to the field to learn the back-end over the front-end. Because there are a million web designers out there that can make a map better than you. They won’t know what they are doing. They won’t know what a coordinate system is and how it matters, but they can stick it together fast. The benefit of the back-end is that you will be viable forever if you apply your spatial analysis skill within a programming framework. Be flexible and adaptable to the programming platform. I write code in R, Python, SQL (PostGIS) and Scala. Some language may be your favorite, but keep your eyes open. One resource, I’ll point people to is Packt. They have a lot of good books that I’ve purchased online.
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