![[ Visit Client Website ]](images/banner.jpg)
BACKGROUND: The importance of understanding the relationship between socio-demographic and economic factors among specific health outcomes or environmental exposures, and the inclusion of these correlations into intervention strategies, is widely recognized by health professionals; however, implementation of standardized processes, methodologies, and tools to visualize and interpret these geographical relationships are not often utilized among state health departments.
METHODS: As part of the CDC National Environmental Public Health Tracking Program, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment developed a reusable spatial analysis framework utilizing the hotspot, cluster, and regression tools within the ArcGIS Spatial Statistics Tools. The framework, designed to study relationships between socio-demographics and health outcome data at the census tract geography, was applied to three separate health outcomes in Colorado: low birth weight rates, age-adjusted diabetes hospitalization rates and age-adjusted acute myocardial infarction hospitalization rates. Regression analyses
RESULTS: Previously unavailable data identifying significant socio-demographic and economic characteristics of communities more at risk for disparate health outcomes, along with their magnitude of association, were shared with program partners. Visualization of these results showed that not all social determinants are distributed evenly across the landscape of higher (and lower) adverse health outcome rates in Colorado. These data were found to have great potential for use in targeting and tailoring public health intervention strategies.
CONCLUSIONS: Available GIS software tools and methodologies, combined with this spatial analysis framework, can assist other public health partners interested in examining the socio-demographics of communities with known disparities for potential use in targeting and tailoring public health intervention strategies.