A data visualization tool that enables users to view socioeconomic data relevant to health outcomes at the community level has been praised for its value to health journalists. 

The Neighborhood Atlas was launched in July, 2018 by Amy Kind, MD, PhD, associate professor, Geriatrics and Gerontology and colleagues. 

The tool leverages the Area Deprivation Index (ADI), a metric that ranks neighborhoods by 17 socioeconomic indicators culled from census data, such as education, employment, and income levels, housing costs and density, and more nuanced data like access to plumbing, transportation and telephones. 

Users can freely access the data online and download the entire dataset for research purposes. 

In an article for the Center for Health Journalism at the University of Southern California Annenberg, author Suzanne Bohan noted how the Neighborhood Atlas allows health journalists to contextualize stories. 

“The hope is to give ground workers, like myself and others, additional tools to allow them to be more effective,” said Dr. Kind. “I’m also hopeful that we can catalyze real policy change to tackle some of the very challenging issues surrounding social determinants of health. I would argue that we should pay just as much attention to the social determinants as we do to the drugs that we prescribe.”

Resources:

• "This vital new health atlas offers fresh look at how place shapes health," USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism, July 13, 2018
• The Neighborhood Atlas
• "Debut of the neighborhood atlas: An interactive map of neighborhood disadvantage to guide medical decision-making," Department of Medicine, July, 2018

Photo (top): Dr. Amy Kind views data from the Neighborhood Atlas. Photo credit: Clint Thayer/Department of Medicine