Geographical and social variations in health have been the focus of recent studies. In addition, the geographic location of neighborhoods and what is around them have been shown to affect health and general well-being as person’s access to food, health resources, transportation, education, and recreational areas are known to affect their overall health. Researchers in New Zealand are now using GIS technology to help determine the health of entire neighborhoods.
During the scope of their study, researchers calculated indexes for one or more health issues such as mortality, heart disease and diabetes, and indexed domains such as recreational amenities, shopping centers, educational and health facilities, and social areas. The precise location was obtained for each location and imported into the GIS software.
GIS based methodology enabled researchers to map travel times to nearest resources allowing them to ascertain which neighborhood has access to the most community resources both in urban and rural areas and directly tie that in with the indexed health domains. The researchers anticipate that this index will all be valuable in other aspects such as city planning, social and health related community resources and public health initiatives.
Link to article: Neighbourhoods and health: a GIS approach to measuring community resource accessibility
Pearce, Jamie, Karen Witten, and Phil Bartie. "Neighbourhoods and health: a GIS approach to measuring community resource accessibility." Journal of epidemiology and community health 60.5 (2006): 389-395.