Ellen Cromley

January 2009. Dr. Ellen Cromley, Institute for Community Research, Hartford, Connecticut, USA; Senior Research Associate, and Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Community Medicine, University of Connecticut Health Center. Ellen is a former Chairperson of the HMSG. Ellen's expertise lies in public health applications of GIS and health and social services location analysis.

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, Ellen was introduced to geography as an undergraduate major in Urban and Environmental Studies at Case Western Reserve University. After graduation, she worked for The Housing Advocates in Cleveland. This organization included lawyers and planners working on a range of housing issues. Ellen received the MA in Geography from The Ohio State University where she continued to focus on housing. She returned to school in 1981 to pursue a PhD in medical geography at the University of Kentucky. In 1985, she accepted a position as Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Connecticut. She remained at UCONN until 2006, at which time she decided it was time to move on.

Ellen co-authored GIS and Public Health with Sara McLafferty (Guilford Press, 2002) and is working with Sara on a second edition including a workbook of exercises, also to be published by Guilford. Ellen also co-authored The City in the Western Tradition (Kendall / Hunt, 2003) with Peter Halvorson. She has conducted workshops on GIS for the Agency on Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), Academy Health, and the American Dietetic Association and has served on NIH panels in several program areas.

Ellen is currently working on several papers resulting from work in collaboration with researchers at the Institute for Community Research to examine the role of alcohol in sexual risk behavior among adult males in slum communities in Mumbai. Her current research, in collaboration with colleagues at the Medical College of Wisconsin and ICR and funded by NIH, examines the relationship between drug use and housing stability over time. This research is based in Hartford and East Hartford, Connecticut. She is currently working with the East Harlem Diabetes Center of Excellence in New York on a CDC-funded REACH Center to address the problem of diabetes in a neighborhood in East Harlem. In addition, she is serving as a consultant on a project investigating the role of the built environment in physical activity among older women. This project is based at Purdue University. Ellen will be participating in the URISA's 2nd GIS in Public Health Conference later this year, including a workshop on privacy and confidentiality for geographic data in health studies.

Ellen may be contacted at ellen.cromley@icrweb.org