Sunday, February 14, 2016

Neighborhoods and Health

Neighborhoods and health: a GIS approach to measuring community resource accessibility

            Studies have shown that there could be an association between the attributes of neighborhoods and the health of its residents. Very few studies have been able to support this through research until this study by Pearce, Witten, and Bartie. They developed a methodology to measure the distance between certain resources and neighborhoods in order to see if any patterns emerged. The resources that they associated with health benefits included shopping (which could include health food stores), education, recreation, and health facilities. They used the 38 350 census meshblocks across New Zealand and while using GIS, distance measures were “calculated from the population weighted centroid of each meshblock to 16 specific types of facilities.”  The map below shows one of the finding from the study.



          From this study, it was clear that regional variations in geographical accessibility to community resources exist, especially between urban and rural areas. With this study, it would be possible to examine further how these neighborhoods are impacted by the proximity of resources and what can be done to improve it.

Pearce, J., Witten, K., & Bartie, P. (2006). Neighbourhoods and health: a GIS approach to measuring community resource accessibility. Journal of epidemiology and community health60(5), 389-395.

I have acted with honesty and integrity in producing this work and am unaware of anyone who has not.
Jolene Klenzendorf 

6 comments:

  1. Interesting! Were there any other factors taken into consideration? It seems like population density, age of subdivision's construction, environmental impacts, etc would also influence the average health in a neighborhood.

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  2. Was there any discussion on the demographics or the reasoning behind why certain areas are located closer to health care centers than others?

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  3. From what Garrett was saying, what was the main demographic that was located closest to heath care centers? Was there also a main demographic that was closer to the health food stores?

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  4. What are the economic factors in this neighborhood? Are those with higher accessibility more apt to a better economic lifestyle?

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  5. What are the economic factors in this neighborhood? Are those with higher accessibility more apt to a better economic lifestyle?

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  6. Focusing on travel time, did measures include public transportation and expenses related to those?

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