Geographic Information Systems and Public Health: Eliminating Perinatal Disparity

by Andrew Curtis

Overview

Geographic Information Systems and Public Health: Eliminating Perinatal Disparity is designed to introduce a community health group to the potential of using a geographic information system (GIS) to improve birth outcomes. Chapters in this book provide an overview of why geography is important in the investigation of health, the importance of the four main components of a GIS (data input, manipulation, analysis and visualization), how important neighborhood context is when using a GIS, and the general differences found between urban and rural health environments. In addition, the reader is introduced to the importance of GIS and confidentially, how a mobile urban population may impact GIS findings, and why pregnant mothers should catered for when making disaster response plans. Examples are drawn heavily from the Baton Rouge Healthy Start program, with one chapter providing an overview guide as to how GIS can be incorporated in the initial grant writing stage for such a program.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781591407560
Publisher:	IGI Global
Publication date:	07/25/2011
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	7.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.81(d)

Table of Contents

	Preface	ix
	Acknowledgments	xxi
Chapter I	Explaining the Geography of Infant Health	1
	Geographic Variations in Infant Health	2
	Smoking is Bad	9
	What Does It Mean to Be Poor?	10
	Stress	11
	The Geography of Health	12
	References	18
Chapter II	An Introduction to GIS (All Things Data)	21
	Data Input	24
	Health Data	24
	Confidentiality Issues	27
	Address Matching/Geocoding	28
	Other Useful Data 1: Socioeconomic Data	31
	Other Useful Data 2: Boundary and Background Data	32
	Data Manipulation	37
	Aggregating into Spatial Units	37
	Data Reduction	41
	Creating New Data	42
	Calculating Deprivation Indexes	42
	Improving Health Outcome Information	44
	Perinatal Periods of Risk (PPOR)	45
	References	47
Chapter III	An Introduction to GIS (All Things Spatial)	52
	Visualizing the Data	52
	Choropleth Map	57
	Common Dot Map	60
	Isarithmic (Isoline) Map	61
	Proportional (Graduated) Point Symbol Map	61
	Spatial Analysis	62
	CrimeStat	64
	GeoDa	65
	Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR)	65
	SaTScan	66
	GIS as a Management Information System	68
	What is a Neighborhood?	69
	Including Geography in the Analysis	70
	Holistic Neighborhood Investigations	72
	Spatially Synthesizing Previous Research	73
	References	73
Chapter IV	The Geography of Health Risks	79
	Infant Deaths, Low Birth Weight, and Short Gestation Deliveries	83
	Medical Risks	85
	Behavioral Risks	87
	So What Can We Do With GIS?	91
	Cohort or Social Risks	95
	Social Risks: Disparities in African American Neighborhoods	96
	Spatial Cohort	98
	Neighborhood Risks	99
	Suffer the Children	100
	Environmental Risks	103
	GIS Analyses of Environmental Risks	107
	GIS, Cancer, and Low Birth Weight Research in Louisiana	110
	Cancer and Birth Outcome Co-Investigation Template	111
	Summarizing It All: The Relationship Between Risk and Stress	113
	So What Can Be Done?	114
	References	119
Chapter V	GIS and Spatial Analysis: Keeping It Simple	146
	Exploratory Analysis vs. Hypothesis Testing	146
	Spatial Design	148
	Spatial Sampling	149
	Aggregation Effects	153
	Three Simple Techniques: Overlay, Density, and a Difference of Proportions Test	154
	Overlay as Analysis	154
	A Cautionary Tale	157
	Density Analysis	157
	Difference of Proportions Test	160
	Results for Year One (Table 1)	165
	Results for Year Two (Table 2)	165
	Results for Year Three (Table 3)	167
	Under-18 Pregnancies (Table 4)	169
	References	172
Chapter VI	Advanced Spatial Analysis	174
	Spatial Autocorrelation	174
	Global Spatial Autocorrelation	175
	Local Spatial Autocorrelation	178
	Cluster Analysis	179
	Cluster Techniques	182
	Spatial Filtering (DMAP)	182
	Nearest Neighbor Hierarchical Clustering (NNHC)	183
	Kernel Density Estimation	184
	Infant Mortality and Prenatal Risks: The Case of East Baton Rouge	188
	Regressing Selected Prenatal Risk Factors on the Infant Mortality Rate	192
	Geographically Weighted Regression	194
	References	199
Chapter VII	Spatial/Temporal Stability in Neighborhoods of Risk: The Mobility of Mothers	203
	How Far Do the Mothers Move?	204
	Temporal Stability and Implications for Outreach	208
	Developing a Neighborhood Categorization Scheme Based on Temporal Stability	208
	Constructing Neighborhoods Around Mortality Locations	210
	Temporal Stability in Risks Around Infant Deaths	211
	Temporal Stability in a Global Risk Investigation	216
	Temporal Stability in the Four Neighborhoods	218
	Results from the Difference of Proportions t-test	219
	Conclusions on Temporal Stability	221
	References	222
Chapter VIII	Patient Confidentiality	224
	Confidentiality in Maps	226
	Statistical (Attribute) Confidentiality	226
	Spatial (Locational) Confidentiality	227
	Preserving Confidentiality in Governmental Agencies	227
	U.S. Department of Health and Human Services	228
	U.S. Census	229
	U.S. Department of Justice	229
	Geographically Masking the Location of Confidential Point Data	230
	Experimental Testing	230
	Results for Global Geographic Masking	231
	Results for Local Geographic Masking	232
	Preserving Spatial Confidentiality of Two Locally Masked Point Patterns	237
	Manipulating Both Area Boundaries and the Location of Confidential Point Data	240
	References	243
Chapter IX	Creating the Baton Rouge Healthy Start GIS	245
	Beginnings	246
	Determining the Program Area	258
	Identifying Areas With No Prenatal Care	259
	Neighborhood Profiling	262
	Creating the Database	262
	Data Input	264
	Reaching Out	265
	What Next?	266
	Post Script	266
	References	266
Chapter X	Bioterrorism, Pregnancy, and Old White Men	268
	Vulnerability in the U.S.	268
	Bioterrorism and Pregnancy Risk	269
	GIS and Vulnerability Mapping	271
	Identifying the Vulnerable	272
	So How Do We Bring Healthy Start into This?	274
	Are Pregnant Women Really Vulnerable?	275
	Criticisms of Syndromic Surveillance	279
	References	282
Chapter XI	Rural Health Issues and Their Investigation in a GIS Environment	287
	Introduction	287
	The Complexity of Rurality	288
	Rural Places and Health	289
	An Overview of Some Rural Health Issues	290
	Rural Geography and Dealing With Rural Data	295
	Conclusion	300
	References	301
	About the Authors	305
	Index	307