Table 1 Issues identified by workshop participants as important for GIS and cancer control, with votes for each.

Major Issues Discussed

Develop methods to ensure privacy and confidentiality while allowing access, especially with small data sets. Encourage collaborations among agencies, ethicists, HIPAA specialists, "maskers" to reduce ethical barriers to sharing data.

Develop tools and theory to deal with time and spatial temporal aspects. How do we get geo dynamic data (e.g., spatial/temporal, residential history)?

Create a searchable and user-friendly one-stop portal for data, boundaries, references, and tools. Foster collaboration among data holders and GIS developers to create metadata that are standardized, understandable, and usable by multiple stakeholders.

Build a critical mass of multi-disciplinary scientists to work together in a Center of Excellence dedicated to developing theoretical and practical GIS studies

Develop strategies and tools for handling and communicating uncertainty.

Create methods to use census data more effectively in combination with health data collected.

Determine that community-based participatory research is the approach that should be used for GIS when used as a tool for cancer control.

Fund and support "high-risk, high-gain" tool and resource development.

Additional Issues Raised

Standardize and develop best practices for statistics (e.g., cluster analyses); eliminate overlap with regard to display mechanisms, technologies, and methods.

Encourage collaboration among cancer control specialists, GIS experts and policy makers to enable them to understand GIS information (e.g., evaluate information they receive that is conflicting or contradictory, develop policies that will be likely to control cancer, enable stakeholders to communicate that information and those policies, and to give them GIS information that applies to their geopolitical boundaries).

Support the development of theory-based methodologies that quantify or assess the total uncertainty in a GIS cancer analysis.

Improve the accuracy of geocoding in the short- and long-term.

Develop standards and methods to ensure data quality to avoid erroneous inferences from complex data.

Focus broadly on goal of reducing cancer burden using GIS methods (e.g., by facilitating how current exploratory tools can be used in interventions and clinical trials).

Train both information users and providers in effective ways to transfer knowledge.

Develop tools, such as simple flexible mapping programs, for users at all levels.

Foster collaboration between GIS developers and the public to enable the public to understand GIS data, use GIS data, become informed about GIS findings and health and exposure and health access patterns in their geographical areas; identify public health issues of concern to community; develop GIS systems responsive to those needs.

Encourage collaborations among multi-disciplinary groups that develop and disseminate rigorous spatial statistical methods.

Support collaboration among GIS academics and other GIS experts and public health, academic, and agencies that do not have the expertise to develop mentorship and training programs for those that do not have them, cannot afford them, or are too small to have GIS experts.

Improve information on data quality (e.g., robustness of data feeding into software; Census data and affect on rates and data compatibility and sources).

Foster collaboration among agencies and between data holders and GIS developers to facilitate and standardize sharing data that can be used in GIS systems.

Develop data integration strategies (e.g., integrate data from multiple stakeholders).

Establish methods to deal with practical problems (e.g., political issues, economic effects, need to define boundaries such as school districts.

Develop web-based, feasible, and usable tools for handling and managing GIS data.

Develop interdisciplinary tools that enable collaboration and ability to work effectively with geospatial information.

Facilitate collaborations among GIS developers, program evaluators, and funders to evaluate whether money invested in GIS and other health programs leads to improvements in cancer control.

Support collaborations between GIS developers and health professionals that lead to improved understanding of health patterns in communities.

Create interdisciplinary collaborations to improve ability to conduct small area studies.

Encourage collaboration between the U.S. Postal Service and other agencies to make postal code information accessible, usable, and useful.

Develop simplified standards-based, automated data merging tools.

Develop non-spatial resource for GIS, including imagery library.

Encourage 3D visualization and knowledge spatio-temporal pattern analysis.

Develop communication and education strategies for non-professionals and across disciplines.