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Professor Yanjia CAO

Assistant Professor 

Room 10.17
391 77451
yanjiac@hku.hk

HKU Scholar Hub
CAO YJ.png

Professor Yanjia Cao received her PhD in Geography from University of Maryland, and MS in Geography from University at Buffalo-SUNY. As a health geographer, she had cross-disciplinary training in public health science during her postdoctoral scholarship, at Stanford University School of Medicine, Division of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine, and also University of California San Diego, School of Public Health. Her current projects cover a variety of world-wide locations, concentrating on food environment and diabetes in San Diego, access to COVID-19 vaccine in England, and hospital facility functionality in Malawi. She serves board of directors (BOD) for the Health and Medical Geography specialty group at AAG since 2019. She was also the BOD member for the International Association of Chinese Professionals in Geographic Information Sciences during 2019-2020.

Research Interests

  • Health geography

  • Spatial data science

  • Health disparities

  • Spatial epidemiology

  • Space-time data mining

  • Data visualization

Courses

GEOG1005

Map Use, Reading and Interpretation

6

credits

Annual; 2nd Semester

GEOG2169

Geography and Global Health

6

credits

Annual; 1st Semester

Selected Publications

  2023  

  • Yang, X., Zheng, X., Cao, Y., Chen, H., Tang, L., & Yang, H. (2023). Connectivity analysis in pedestrian networks: A case study in Wuhan, China. Applied Geography, 151, 102843. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apgeog.2022.102843
     

  • Kesia Esther Da, S., Kashmira, D., Nilma, H., Christopher, L., Niniya, J., Priyanka, B., Joshua, W., Rahul, S., Seth Ari Sim-Son, H., Matthew, M., Pankaj, B., Yanjia, C., Shanta, D., Stephen, P. L., & Jason, R. A. (2023). Population structure and antimicrobial resistance patterns of Salmonella; Typhi and Paratyphi A amid a phased municipal vaccination campaign in Navi Mumbai, India. medRxiv, 2023.2002.2023.23286256. https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.02.23.23286256
     

  • Yang, X., Yang, M., Cao, Y., Ren, C., Zhang, F., & Tang, L. (2023). Three-dimensional structure determination of grade-separated road intersections from crowdsourced trajectories. International Journal of Applied Earth Observation and Geoinformation, 125, 103598. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jag.2023.103598
     

  • Chen, H., Cao, Y., Feng, L., Zhao, Q., & Torres, J. R. V. (2023). Understanding the spatial heterogeneity of COVID-19 vaccination uptake in England. BMC public health, 23(1), 895. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-023-15801-w

  2022  

  • Chen, H., Cao, Y., Feng, L., & Zhao, Q. (2022). Measuring and validating spatial accessibility to Covid-19 vaccination sites: a case study in England.
     

  • Chen, H., Cao, Y., Feng, L., & Zhao, Q. (2022). Modelling the COVID-19 vaccine uptake rates in a geographical and socioeconomic context: a case study of England. 
     

  • Yang, X., Hou, L., Guo, M., Cao, Y., Yang, M., & Tang, L. (2022). Road intersection identification from crowdsourced big trace data using Mask‐RCNN. Transactions in GIS, 26(1), 278-296. https://doi.org/10.1111/tgis.12851

  • Cao, Y., Jankowska, M. M., Yang, J.-A., & Shi, Y. (2022). Spatial and temporal pattern of cannabis use disorder in California 2010-2019. Spatial and Spatio-temporal Epidemiology, 42, 100520. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sste.2022.100520
     

  • da Silva, K. E., Tanmoy, A. M., Pragasam, A. K., Iqbal, J., Sajib, M. S. I., Mutreja, A., Veeraraghavan, B., Tamrakar, D., Qamar, F. N., Dougan, G., Bogoch, I., Seidman, J. C., Shakya, J., Vaidya, K., Carey, M. E., Shrestha, R., Irfan, S., Baker, S., Luby, S. P., . . . Andrews, J. R. (2022). The international and intercontinental spread and expansion of antimicrobial-resistant Salmonella Typhi: a genomic epidemiology study. The Lancet Microbe, 3(8), e567-e577. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2666-5247(22)00093-3
     

  • Chen, H., Cao, Y., Feng, L., Zhao, Q., & Torres, J. R. V. (2022). Understanding the spatial heterogeneity of Covid-19 vaccination uptake: a case study of England. 

  2021  

  • Cao, Y., Karthikeyan, A., Krishna, S., Raju, R., Sindh, C., Srinivasan, M., Ramanujam, K., Mohan, V., Kang, G., John, J., Andrews, J., Lo, N. (2021) Geospatial pattern of typhoid fever in India: a model-based estimate of cohort and surveillance data. Journal of Infectious Diseases 224 (Sppl_5), S475-S483. doi:10.1093/infdis/jiab187
     

  • Yang, X., Cao, Y., Liu R., Guo, M., Tang, L. (2021) Accessibility assessment of buildings based on multi-source spatial data: taking Wuhan as a case study. ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information, 10(10), 701. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijgi10100701

  2020  

  • Tamrakar, D., Vaidya, K., Yu, A., Aiemjoy, K., Naga, S. R., Cao, Y., Bern, C., Shrestha, R., Karmacharya, B., Pradhan, S., Qamar, F., Saha, S., Date, K., Longley, A., Hemlock, C., Luby, S., Garrett, D., Bogoch, I., Andrews, J. (2020) Spatial heterogeneity of enteric fever in 2 diverse communities in Nepal. Clinical Infectious Diseases 71 (Sppl_3), S205-S213. https://doi.org/10.1093/cid/ciaa1319
     

  • Cao, Y., Stewart, K., Factor, J., Billing, A., Massey E., Artigiani, E., Wagner, M., Dezman, Z., Wish, E. (2020). Using socially-sensed data to infer ZIP level characteristics for the spatial temporal analysis of drug-related health problems in Maryland. Health & Place, 63, 102345. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.healthplace.2020.102345

  2019  

  • Cao, Y., Stewart, K., Wish, E., Artigiani, E., Sorg, M. (2019). Determining spatial access to opioid use disorder treatment and emergency medical services in New Hampshire. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 101, 55-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2019.03.013

  2017  

  • Stewart, K., Cao, Y., Hsu, M. H., Artigiani, E., & Wish, E. (2017). Geospatial Analysis of Drug Poisoning Deaths Involving Heroin in the USA, 2000-2014. Journal of Urban Health, 94, 4, 572-586. http://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-017-0177-7

  2016  

  • Cao, Y., Stewart, K., & Kalil, R. (2016). Geographic patterns of end-stage renal disease and kidney transplants in the Midwestern United States. Applied Geography, 71, 133–143. doi:10.1016/j.apgeog.2016.05.001

BOD Services

  • 2019 – 2022  Board of Directors, Health and Medical Geography Specialty Group, American Association of Geographers

  • 2019 – 2020  Board of Directors, International Association of Chinese Professionals in Geographic Information Sciences

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