Mapping Research

        Public health educators have different theories and models that explain how an individual changes certain behaviors to become healthy.  Many of these theories and models have certain constructs that help understand the reasoning behind why they change or not.  Although external factors tend to play a small role in the overall scheme of “being healthy”, it certainly effects numerous people in changing a bad behavior.  One of the biggest external factors that public health as a whole faces, is the environment.  If the environment is not suitable then the risk of chronic illness increases and healthy behaviors decrease.  Recently, Mapping or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been used within the field of public health to determine how to change the environment so the population can indeed change their behaviors.

             The first article recognizes that the environment does in fact support healthy behaviors, but focuses more on the exposure to contaminants, duration of exposure time, and hazards.  The researchers use The Environmental Public Health Tracking Network (EPHTN) to follow the variables listed above in certain communities.  This mapping program allows the researchers to make correlations between health illnesses and geographic locations of the environment by plotting points on a map using secondary data.  From these points the authors could determine any correlations between health behaviors and the environment.  According to Mather et al. (2004) using such mapping programs like GIS has provided researchers a method to link variables within the environment, but they still need additional efforts to confirm the links. 

            The second article also realized that the environment plays a key factor, but focused more on socio-economic status and the safety of the neighborhood for physical activity.  The researchers used GIS to determine community boundaries, schools, public recreation facilities, and numerous other factors that may affect healthy behaviors.  Like many problems, socio-economic status can link to numerous problems besides a poor health, but according to Wilson, Kirtland, Ainsworth, and Addy (2004) GIS determined that lower socio-economic environments do in fact reduce the chances of a person having access to facilities and user friendly communities.  This study can help future researchers in public health fixed communities and make them more accessible to its members. 

            The last article actually is different because the authors compare two different built environments, GIS and Senior Walking Environmental Tool (SWEAT) to set the parameters of the communities.   The interesting part in this article was the variables needed to sustain an environment where community members would actually use it.  Some variables include pleasantness, safety/comfort, accessibility, and maintenance.  All of those affect the usage and ultimately the health of the community.  The built environments of both GIS and SWEAT still had healthy effects on the community.  “This study supports prior research that identified built environment correlates of walking for exercise or transportation and adds to the body of research by proposing a method of creating conceptually meaningful measures of neighborhood walkability from objective, micro scale data” (Keast, Carlson, Chapman, & Michael, 2010).  In other words using a mapping application for walkability of a built environment are effective measures to use when creating such environment. 

            Based off of the three articles there are numerous uses for GIS within the classroom.  First off, an instructor could create real-life assignments where students use GIS in mapping out a community and relationship it has to health.  It could be broken up into 2 parts, where the first part allows the student to see any external factors that may complicate usage (traffic accidents, deaths, sewage plant, sidewalks etc.).  The second part could be to use the analysis and build the environment for a community.  Not only is this public health, but it’s a service project as well.  Other uses for mapping could be finding increased pockets of infectious diseases.  The students would get a data set and run maps to see area that may have been infected with disease (HIV/AIDS, Chlamydia, Gonorrhea, and Diabetes).  They then could use this data and create a program that could reduce the prevalence of specific diseases.  Lastly, students could map out the number of healthcare options within a community and determine provider balance within a community.  This could also help students understand the population of non/under-insured people within the community.  Those are just a few examples of how GIS could help students within a public health course.  I actually had the chance to use this software in my MPH and found it very interesting how applicable it is to real-life situations. 

            GIS is still new to the public health field and as it grows, it will be used more frequently and with better results for uses.  Until then it still helps out in numerous ways that weren’t possible before. 

References

Keast, E. M., Carlson, N. E., Chapman, N. J., & Michael, Y. L. (2010). Using built environmental observation tools: Comparing two methods of creating a measure of the builty environment. Journal of Health Promotion, 24(5), 354-361.

Mather, F. J., White, L. E., Langlois, E. C., Shorter, C. F., Swalm, C. M., Shaffer, J. G., & Hartley, W. R. (2004). Statistical methods for linking health, exposure, and hazards. Environmental Health Perspectives , 112(14), 1440-1445.

Wilson, D. K., Kirtland, K. A., Ainsworth, B. E., & Addy, C. L. (2004). Socioeconomic status and perceptions of access and safety for physcial activity. The Society of Behavioral Medicine, 28(1), 20-28.