Student Highlights
Improving public health action with spatial science

Recognising the value of continuous learning, Zoe Baldwin returned to study to complete a Graduate Certificate in Spatial Science. This achievement has helped to further her professional practice in spatial epidemiology and disease outbreaks.

Starting her career as a hospital-based physiotherapist, Zoe decided to retrain as an infectious disease epidemiologist in 2019.

“I made the switch from one-to-one patient care to answering public health research questions and have not looked back.

“Since making a career switch, I have been focused on building subject-matter expertise and skills in detecting, describing, and controlling disease outbreaks.

“I decided to enrol in the Graduate Certificate in Spatial Science at the University of Newcastle as I was interested in the use of spatial epidemiology to inform public health action,” Zoe said.

Identifying a knowledge gap in her own professional practice, Zoe was looking to learn more about spatial epidemiology.

“Spatial epidemiology is an important aspect of infectious diseases epidemiology particularly with diseases where environmental factors contribute to disease burden or transmission.

“Epidemiologists may need to understand spatial relationships in order to implement public health action,” Zoe said.

Examples of these diseases include mosquito-borne diseases or Legionnaires' disease.

Zoe explains that as technology advances, society has a lot more data available to it, but it is important to know how the data can be used to answer relevant research questions.

For Zoe, acquiring skills that enable her to utilise different data sources is highly relevant to her current job role.

“In this degree I have learned how to extract and analyse earth observation data using cloud-based systems.

“The applications of this technology have enormous potential in many disciplines, including health research,” she said.

Zoe is also grateful to have developed skills that are transferable to any discipline that utilises spatial science technology.

“Whilst lab work had a strong focus on environmental management case examples, the principles learned are applicable to any spatially related research question.

“I have been able to apply spatial science skills in my work investigating diseases outbreaks in Australia.

“Mapping and modelling disease risk using spatial layers has been an important aspect of outbreak management in my work,” she said.

As the Graduate Certificate is offered online with flexible study loads, Zoe was able to continue working full-time and studying spatial science without affecting her day-to-day workload.

Zoe also found the teaching style beneficial as she was able to interact with weekly labs and ask staff questions as required.

The major project topics for each subject also allowed her to tailor learning outcomes around topics that felt most relevant to her interest areas.

She also enjoyed the opportunity to engage with lectures that were presented by leading industry experts, presenting advanced applications of spatial science like machine-learning and modelling.

Recently completing the Graduate Certificate program, Zoe now aims to seek opportunities where spatial epidemiology skills are required in order to better answer research questions and then implement public health action.

Zoe Baldwin

Recognising the value of continuous learning, Zoe Baldwin returned to study to complete a Graduate Certificate in Spatial Science. This achievement has helped to further her professional practice in spatial epidemiology and disease outbreaks.