GPS “Mobile Mappers,” Surveys Document Health Equity Issues in New Haven
Posted by Mark on Nov 2, 2009
Orange Teams Launch City Health Effort
A major initiative to promote chronic disease prevention by focusing on the three risk factors which play a role in more than 70 percent of all U.S. deaths — tobacco use, poor diet and lack of physical activity — has kicked off with teams dressed in orange canvassing neighborhoods to survey 4,000 local residents and map local health problems.
The teams were hired by Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE), a partnership between the community and the Yale University School of Public Health which aims to reduce chronic disease risks by promoting a healthy lifestyle and using research data to track health changes at a neighborhood level. The goal is to involve the community as much as possible in conducting the research itself, and in deciding what is most important to measure. The results of the survey collection will be immediately made available for analysis and discussion.
Courtesy Paul Bass, New Haven Independent
Beginning this summer, teams of Youth@Work employees criss-crossed the city, documenting issues like poorly-lit parks and unsafe traffic conditions. Paul Bass of the New Haven Independent has reporting here:
High-schoolers Tania Rivera and Jonathan Gibson (left and center in top photo) and Bethany Davidson (at right), a Yale Divinity School and UConn student — recorded the info on a hand-held GPS-equipped “mobile mapper” created by a local company called Matrix Public Health Solutions. Then they proceeded down Chapel Street, on their way to … a liquor store…. The teams of monitors will focus on three activities promoted or hindered by the sites they encounter in the neighborhoods: eating, smoking, and exercise. The walk in West River revealed a two-part educational mission: the eventual goal of producing data to drive public policy; and immediate lessons along the way for teens taking part.
A neighborhood health survey was launched a few weeks ago and intends to reach thousands of residents, asking detailed questions about health-related issues and community cohesiveness. WTNH has a story about the project here. The results from the neighborhood survey will be combined with the students’ asset maps to create a potentially powerful picture of the current status of health in New Haven neighborhoods.
Results
The results of CARE’s ongoing work will be of great interest to the New Haven Health Equity Alliance, a new city-led partnership to refocus health programs on prevention and addressing the root causes of health disparities. Having ongoing, statistically-valid measurements of the health status of New Haven residents — as perceived by residents themselves — is absolutely critical to promoting policy changes that will help create a healthier city.
CARE’s community-based research techniques on chronic diseases can also serve as a model both to communities outside of New Haven, as well as if New Haven eventually wants to collect broader data related to health disparities. For example, education, income and civic cohesion are critical to health, but were not measured within CARE’s survey.
The CARE data will also be of interest to philanthropic foundations, local health agencies, and neighborhood leaders. For example, the Neighborhood Quality of Life Survey and Workshops being planned this year by several community management teams and neighborhood associations within New Haven may be able to use CARE’s information on neighborhood concerns to complement their own neighborhood discussions. To use another example, the New Haven Safe Streets Coalition, a group seeking to reduce traffic-related injuries in New Haven by 90% by 2015, will be very interested to learn more about residents’ perceptions about walking and bicycling in their neighborhoods.
Connection with National Neighborhood Indicators Discussion
The CARE program also fits in closely with the theory of change identified by the National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership (NNIP) and other “community indicators” programs like DataHaven. According to Thomas Kingsley of NNIP, having a set of constantly updated indicators on changing neighborhood conditions in cities would be of extreme use, but until recently has been unfeasible due to limited technology (such as hand-held GPS mapping devices).
Author: Mark Abraham, Executive Director, DataHaven, 11/2/09
Kingsley writes that now that information can be democratized, community leaders, planners, and researchers can help stakeholders use the information directly themselves, which increases its impact. They can also work on using data to target individual, easily-comprehensible issues (such as hundreds of tobacco signs in a particular neighborhood, to use one example from the students’ mapping project), but do so in a way that leads toward more comprehensive strategies.
