BACKGROUND The accessibility to health centers is a limitation to the use of preventive and curative health centers. AIM To assess geographic accessibility using a parameter that integrates information about the use of preventive services and travelling time from home to the health center. MATERIAL AND METHODS We analyzed target geographical areas of 10 community centers located at the Nort...

BACKGROUND Despite evidence to suggest significant spatial variation in out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) and bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation (BCPR) rates, geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial analysis have not been widely used to understand the reasons behind this variation. This study employs spatial statistics to identify the location and extent of clusters of bystand...

PURPOSE Walking to and from school contributes to total physical activity levels. This study investigated whether perceived and actual neighborhood features were associated with walking to or from school among adolescent girls. METHODS A sample of geographically diverse eighth-grade girls (N = 890) from the Trial of Activity in Adolescent Girls (TAAG) study living within 1.5 miles of their mi...

Under models of isolation-by-distance, population structure is determined by the probability of identity-by-descent between pairs of genes according to the geographic distance between them. Well established analytical results indicate that the relationship between geographical and genetic distance depends mostly on the neighborhood size of the population which represents a standardized measure ...

Improving survival rates at the neighborhood level is increasingly seen as a priority for reducing overall rates of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA) in the United States. Since wide disparities exist in OHCA rates at the neighborhood level, it is important for public health officials and residents to be able to quickly locate neighborhoods where people are at elevated risk for cardiac arre...

PURPOSE There is a need for empirical support of the association between the built environment and disability-related outcomes. This study explores the associations between community and neighborhood land uses and community participation among adults with acquired physical disability. METHODS Cross-sectional data from 508 community-living chronically disabled adults in New Jersey were obtaine...

INTRODUCTION Geographic information systems (GIS) enable public health data to be analyzed in terms of geographical variability and the relationship between risk factors and diseases. This study discusses the application of the geographic weighted regression (GWR) model to health data to improve the understanding of spatially varying social and clinical factors that potentially impact leprosy p...

Challenges to health care access in the US are forcing local policymakers and service delivery systems to find novel ways to address the shortage of primary care clinicians. The uninsured and underinsured face the greatest obstacles in accessing services. Geographic information systems mapping software was used to illustrate health disparities in Alachua County, FL; galvanize a community respon...

This study explored individual, social, and built environmental attributes in and outside of the retirement village setting and associations with various active living outcomes including objectively measured physical activity, specific walking behaviors, and social participation. Residents in Perth, Australia (N = 323), were surveyed on environmental perceptions of the village and surrounding n...

Unlike most of the literature surveying the proliferation and increased usage of social media in society at large, this study analyzes the potential of blogs to mobilize local communities. It focuses on blogging in the context of a geographic locality and describes a participatory action research project in inner city Detroit built around the “Going Home” blog hosted by The Detroit News. The re...