Using Geographic Information Systems to Understand Health Care Access

Phillips, Robert L.; Kinman, Edward L.; Schnitzer, Patricia G.; Lindbloom, Erik; Ewigman, Bernard

doi:10.1001/archfami.9.10.971

Cited by 72 publications

(33 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…Service location was often a key factor in effective delivery and a consideration of where services were, what type of service they delivered and the amount of advocacy support provided were all important in a broader mapping setting (Joseph & Phillips, 1984;Phillips, Kinman, Schnitzer, Lindbloom, & Ewigman, 2000). In this way geographical as well as service gaps were identified.…”

Section: Health Geographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Place and provision: Mapping mental health advocacy services in London

Foley

Platzer

2007

Social Science & Medicine

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The National Health Service (NHS) Executive for London carried out an investigation in 2002 as part of their wider mental health strategy to establish whether existing mental health advocacy provision in the city was meeting need. The project took a two-part approach, with an emphasis on, (a) mapping the provision of advocacy services and, (b) cartographic mapping of service location and catchments. Data were collected through a detailed questionnaire with service providers in collaboration with the Greater London Mental Health Advocacy Network (GLMHAN) and additional health and government sources. The service mapping identified some key statistics on funding, caseloads and models of service provision with an additional emphasis on coverage, capacity, and funding stability. The questionnaire was augmented by interviews and focus groups with commissioners, service providers and service users and identified differing perspectives and problems, which informed the different perspectives of each of these groups. The cartographic mapping exercise demonstrated a spatially-even provision of mental health advocacy services across the city with each borough being served by at least one local service as well as by London wide specialist schemes. However, at local level, no one borough had the full range of specialist provision to match local demographic need. Ultimately the research assisted the Advisory Group in providing commissioning agencies with clear information on the current status of city-wide mental health advocacy services, and on gaps in existing advocacy provision alongside previously unconsidered geographical and service dimensions of that provision. r

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Section: Health Geographiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Place and provision: Mapping mental health advocacy services in London

Foley

Platzer

2007

Social Science & Medicine

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“…[17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] Census tract data are likewise increasingly being used to analyze inequities in access to health care, providing insight into the contribution of economic and geographic barriers to obtaining adequate care. [28][29][30] At a time when fully 70% of the 467 U.S. public health objectives for Healthy People 2010 have no socioeconomic targets because of a lack of socioeconomic data in the relevant health data sources, the methodology of geocoding and using census tract area-based socioeconomic measures provides a promising solution to the longstanding problem of unavailable routine data at the national, state, and local level on U.S. socioeconomic health and health care inequities. [17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24] Further underscoring the attractiveness of this approach, starting in 2010, the American Community Survey is scheduled to be releasing census tract data annually, based on five-year rolling estimates, thereby no longer necessitating reliance on only decennial data.…”

Section: The Census Tract In the 21st Century: Serving The Body Politmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Century of Census Tracts: Health & the Body Politic (1906–2006)

Krieger

2006

J Urban Health

104

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In 2006, the U.S. celebrates the 100th birthday of the census tract. These geographic units, born out of concerns for urban well-being, were first proposed in 1906 to provide a Bconvenient and scientific city map system^for the City of New York. They were employed for the first time in the U.S. census in 1910 in eight cities, via a joint effort involving the U.S. Census Bureau and state and local health departments. Initially termed Bsanitary areas^because of their relevance to planning for public health and health services, census tracts are now widely used by all sectors of government and by myriad disciplines in the health, social, and geographic sciences for research as well as policy development, implementation, and evaluation. In this article, I describe the census tract's underappreciated origins, give examples of its current use in analyzing and addressing social disparities in health and health care, and discuss its continued significance and implications for population health and the public data required for informed democratic governance.

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“…Any primary care setting or clinical enterprise could potentially benefit from the techniques described here and previously, in particular the expanding primary care safety net. 19,20 Clearly articulated statements about the value of these tools to clinic and community leaders were couched against the need for less technical and time-intensive processes-processes that could permit secure, interactive queries of mapped clinic and population data, because there is a dearth of tools able to inform primary care leaders about access and utilization patterns at the practice and community levels. On a national level, federal funding initiatives to expand health information technology, regional health information organizations, and uniform data set collection in primary care safety nets are encouraging opportunities for diffusion of analytic mapping in the primary care setting.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harnessing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to Enable Community-Oriented Primary Care

Bazemore

Phillips

Miyoshi³

2010

The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine

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Background: Despite growing acceptance and implementation of geographic information systems (GIS) in the public health arena, its utility for clinical population management and coordination by leaders in a primary care clinical health setting has been neither fully realized nor evaluated.Methods: In a primary care network of clinics charged with caring for vulnerable urban communities, we used GIS to (1) integrate and analyze clinical (practice management) data and population (census) data and (2) generate distribution, service area, and population penetration maps of those clinics. We then conducted qualitative evaluation of the responses of primary care clinic leaders, administrators, and community board members to analytic mapping of their clinic and regional population data.Results: Practice management data were extracted, geocoded, and mapped to reveal variation between actual clinical service areas and the medically underserved areas for which these clinics received funding, which was surprising to center leaders. In addition, population penetration analyses were performed to depict patterns of utilization. Qualitative assessments of staff response to the process of mapping clinical and population data revealed enthusiastic engagement in the process, which led to enhanced community comprehension, new ideas about data use, and an array of applications to improve their clinical revenue. However, they also revealed barriers to further adoption, including time, expense, and technical expertise, which could limit the use of GIS and mapping unless economies of scale across clinics, the use of web technology, and the availability of dynamic mapping tools could be realized.Conclusions: Analytic mapping was enthusiastically received and practically applied in the primary care setting, and was readily comprehended by clinic leaders for innovative purposes. This is a tool of particular relevance amid primary care safety-net expansion and increased funding of health information technology diffusion in these settings,

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Using Geographic Information Systems to Understand Health Care Access

Cited by 72 publications

References 21 publications

Place and provision: Mapping mental health advocacy services in London

Place and provision: Mapping mental health advocacy services in London

A Century of Census Tracts: Health & the Body Politic (1906–2006)

Harnessing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to Enable Community-Oriented Primary Care

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