Public health researchers to create urban health index
Janurary 15, 2012
A Georgia State University team–Richard Rothenberg, professor of public health, Christine Stauber, assistant professor of public health; Scott Weaver, data director of the Center of Excellence for Research in Health Disparities; and Dajun Dai, assistant professor of Geosciences–recently received a grant from the Japan-based World Health Organization (WHO) Kobe center to develop an urban health index. This index will track reduction in health disparities and health improvement.
The team has developed a model index using urban United States counties as trial data to compare individuals at the upper and lower ends of the range of health status as well as the slope of change over the population (how quickly the index rises from the lower to upper end). This rise captures the heterogeneity of health care status within the population.
His team has applied to receive additional health data through the National Center for Health Statistics in order study data that are not available for public use. The team expects to receive similar health data from sources in Europe and Japan.
The team hopes that the measurement tool will provide valid distinctions within geographic areas. Because available data may be radically different in different areas, comparison among areas is a greater challenge than comparison within areas. In either case, however, the measure has the potential to help evaluate the effectiveness of health disparity reduction efforts.
The team plans to focus on the smallest geographic jurisdiction available (ZIP code or census track) from NCHS. They will begin with Georgia, whose 159 counties and many census tracts are known to exhibit considerable health disparities. The plan is to enlarge validation and testing to other urban communities in the United States and then to areas of the developing world. An important aspect of this work is the geographic visualization of disparities, and the team hopes to have displays on the Visual Wall (Petit Science Center, 4th floor) in the next few months.
The team is interested in such emerging regions as India and China but will need local contacts to obtain the information. They are working closely with the Kobe Center to develop collaborations.
“Contacts will be key. The team is very interested in any health data that are available for urban areas and that can be used as test data to examine the distribution of health status determinants,” says Rothenberg.
