Link to data
Prepared by: Alex Mikulas, PhD, CACHE postdoctoral associate
Date: March 16, 2026
Author: The IPUMS DHS Spatial Analysis and Health Research Hub is designed to be a resource for researchers who are familiar with IPUMS DHS population health survey data but new to weather, environment, and disaster research that uses spatial data sources. Such resources include conceptual frameworks for environment/health research, introductions to datasets, spatial data processing, and analysis code. The code and data resources in the hub use R scripting to demonstrate basic spatial data processing techniques for integrating numerous environmental and weather-related data with social and health data in the DHS.
IPUMS Demographic and Health Surveys (IPUMS-DHS) is a database of thousands of consistently coded variables on the health and well-being of men, women, children, and births of randomly selected households in 42 African countries and 9 Asian countries. Data include records of all household members, effectively capturing social and demographic data across the life course and age groups for low- and middle-income countries.
The guides and resources in the IPUMS-DHS Spatial Analysis and Health Research Hub are oriented toward data integration with IPUMS-DHS data. However, many scripts can be applied to any other social, health, and aging datasets that have geographic data identifiers. This includes datasets that have variables for administrative geographies (unique identifiers or spatial data polygons), respondent address or lat/long variables, or other gridded and raster datasets examining aging and health.
To support such research, the IPUMS Global Health team received a 2023 supplemental grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, or NICHD (3R01HD069471-12S1).
Data are available on: Hub resources include data integration walkthroughs, dataset explanations, spatial data processes, and more. Datasets referenced include CHIRPS, CHIRTS, NVDI, VIIRS, and more. See a sample of the numerous resources below:
Citation: IPUMS. (2026, March 16). Supporting Research on Extreme Weather and Health. IPUMS DHS Spatial Analysis and Health Research Hub. https://tech.popdata.org/dhs-research-hub/about.html