The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #46172

Susan Kinne, PhD¹, Donald L Patrick, PhD, MSPH¹, Elizabeth Aigbie, MS¹, Ron Ovadenko¹, and Shelley Lawson, MPH². (1) Center for Disability Policy and Research, University of Washington, 146 N Canal Street #313, Seattle, WA 98103, (206) 685 4769, susaki@u.washington.edu, (2) Epidemiology, Planning and Evaluation, Public Health Seattle/King County, 999 Third Avenue, #1200, Seattle, WA 98104

This paper describes a process developing measures of neighborhood-level accessibility for people with mobility and sensory disabilities. If we understand disability as an interaction between individual capacity and environmental demand, we look to environmental change to reduce disability. Interventions to reduce barriers to access are an important way to make environmental changes, but these interventions must be guided by information on the importance of the barriers and identification of what and where the barriers are. To make it practical for public health to undertake barrier reduction, we need barrier measures that are convenient and minimize costly fieldwork. At the same time, the measures must reflect barriers that are important, not simply measurable. To address these two imperatives, our project reviewed literature, interviewed key informants and conducted focus groups in two Washington cities to identify and prioritize common barriers to access. This paper will illustrate how we used publicly available municipal data and a basic Geographic Information Systems (GIS) package to map aspects of neighborhood environments that indicate barriers. Although much work remains to be done, this approach is a promising way to assemble comparative data on neighborhood accessibility and identify targets for interventions to reduce barriers.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the importance of environmental measures of barriers
• Identify secondary data that can be used to measure neighborhood accessibility
• Understand how Geographic Information Systems can be used to organize and present data

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.