Improving an outreach service with GIS

Libraries are vital community resources that are often under-utilized by the local populations. GIS, therefore, can be utilized to visually identify areas which are not using the services, thus where the staff should focus their outreach efforts. The article "Improving an outreach service by analyzing the relationship of health information disparities to socioeconomic indicators using geographic information systems" looked at there is a free, telephone-based health information service in Tennessee, Consumer and Patient Health Information Service, CAPHIS for short, where citizens call library staff to receive free information packets on different health issues. This service intends to improve health literacy in the area and acts as an alternative source of information for those who do not have access to the internet or have a limited literacy level. The researchers “analyze[d] demographic and socioeconomic patterns” with ArcMap software to create several choropleth maps of the call rate and disease rates per zip code in the state (Socha 2012, p 222). A choropleth map uses graded shading to depict the density of an area, in this case to number of calls to CAPHIS per zip code as well as the number of people in each zip code affected by different diseases.

The researchers discovered that there were several areas that had a large older population, generally lower income, or who had “ambulatory disability,” as shown in the figure below, not taking advantage of CAPHIS.  There is a clear need for medical information in these areas, thus the medical library now clearly can see where their outreach efforts should be most focused.

Furthermore,  with this study, “GIS empowers the library with more knowledge to better meet patron needs and serve its community,”  as the maps are easy to read, understandable, and overall more meaningful than other representations of data, such as tables filled with complicated statistics, and can be easily incorporated into future plans (Socha 2012, p 225). Additionally, this project shows how useful GIS can be in general to a multitude of disciplines, as maps are generally accessible by all kinds of people and can be a useful tool to illustrate data sets of all different kinds.

Socha Y.M, Oelschlegel, S, Vaught, C.J, & Earl M. (2012). Improving an outreach service by analyzing the relationship of health information disparities to socioeconomic indicators using geographic information systems. JMed Lib Assoc 100(3). Retrieved from https://lms.southwestern.edu/file.php/4373/Literature/Socha-2012-HealthOutreach.pdf