Diseases being watched from space

by William Atkins

Friday, 18 January 2008

Members of NASA’s National Space Science and Technology Center and University of Alabama at Birmingham’s (UAB’s) School of Public Health are teaming up to identify human health concerns on Earth from satellites circling above the planet.

The new public health laboratory at UAB will focus on public health problems on Earth with the use of data and images taken from NASA satellites in space.

The NASA and UAB participants are calling the new laboratory the first U.S. dedicated remote sensing laboratory for the express use of medical and public health issues.

The new lab, called the Laboratory for Global Health Observation, was initially developed in 2006. The primary focus of the laboratory is being described as: “… medical and health-based applications for satellite remote sensing.” Its mission is described as: “… to love at broad-scale applications of satellite remote sensing and ways in which this information can be used across diverse fields in the context of international outreach programs.”

Studies within the new laboratory have already provided information on (1) malaria, specifically showing areas of warm standing water that are breeding grounds for mosquitoes, (2) West Nile Virus, specifically showing the relationship between the proximity of tire dumps (which are breeding grounds for the mosquito that carries West Nile Virus) and incidences of the virus, and (3) asthma, specifically areas that are likely to cause more frequency of asthma due to their greater incidences of pollution and other environmental degradations.

NASA satellite data is being used in the new UAB laboratory with regards to such public health issues as: air quality, heat indexes, temperature, humidity, and other environmental conditions that may likely promote diseases and illnesses within the human population.

Additional information on the new lab is found at: http://www.nasa.gov/topics/nasalife/satellite_health.html.

Additional information on NASA studies in space and on Earth are found at: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/main/index.html.

UAB’s website for its School of Public Health (SOPH) is found at: http://www.soph.uab.edu/. For information about UAB’s role in public health in space using NASA technology, please go to: http://www.soph.uab.edu/media/SOPHpubs/uabpublichealth_fall2007.pdf.

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