In Search of Lost Time: How to (R)establish Dialogue between the Earth Observation and Health Research Communities to Fill the Gap between Research and Services in Public/Collective Health Operational Programmes?

ABSTRACT: Initiatives to use orbital remote sensing data in public health applications date back to the early days of  NASA's Earth Observation Satellite Programme, initially called Earth Resources Technology Satellite (ERTS) and  later known as the Landsat Programme. In 1972, Charles Fuller, then head of the Public Health Ecology group at  NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center, circulated an internal document entitled Public Health Applications of Remote  Sensing, setting out the group's research agenda in association with the missions of the emerging Earth observation  satellite programme. Almost 53 years later, we know that we have made a lot of progress in the three target areas for  research established at the start of the programme, forests, geology and agriculture. But how much progress have we  made in the fourth target area, public health, which was already there in 1972? To answer this question, this session  presents five (5) major projects, multi-institutional, multi-scalar, multidisciplinary and (2) being also multinational.  These initiatives are based on a perspective that places health-disease processes in shared territories as an interface  for dialogue between disciplinary areas, community engagement and the design of policies and instruments for  public/collective health actions in localities, cities and regions