Regional Geographic Factors Influence the Effectiveness of Health Systems Decentralization: A Look at Child Health in Rural Honduras

Elisabeth Dowling Root is an Associate Professor in the Geography Department and the Division of Epidemiology at The Ohio State University. Dr. Root completed her PhD in Geography at UNC Chapel Hill in 2009 where she was an NSF Predoctoral Fellow at the Carolina Population Center. Dr. Root is a health geographer whose research focuses on evaluating the impact of large-scale health interventions using geospatial analysis and Geographic Information Systems and examining the effect of our physical environment and social structures on health behaviors and outcomes. She applies a holistic framework, integrating data on individual- and community-levels to study multi-scalar impacts on human health. Dr. Root currently has active research projects in Honduras, Bangladesh, and the Philippines funded through NIH, NSF, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Most recently she began working with the Ohio Departments of Health and Medicaid on the Infant Mortality Research Partnership and the Opioid Analytics project which apply spatial analysis and mapping to the State’s “big data” resources for surveillance activities and to target local health programs.