Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #107876

Charles M. Croner, PhD¹, Terry Lenahan, MBA², Mark Salling, PhD³, George D. Weiner, PhD³, and Chris Kippes, MS⁴. (1) National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 3311 Toledo Rd, RM 3225, Hyattsville, MD 20782, (2) The Center for Community Solutions, 1226 Huron Road, Cleveland, OH 44115, (3) Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs, Cleveland State University, Euclid Avenue, Cleveland, OH 44115, (4) Epidemiology and Surveillance, Cuyahoga County Board of Health, 5550 Venture Drive, Parma, OH 44130, 216-201-2001 ext 1600, ckippes@ccbh.net

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has declared “Achieving a healthy nation is impossible without healthy minority populations and without eliminating racial/ethnic health disparities.” In Cleveland, Ohio, one of our nation's most residentially segregated cities, African American families and children bear an inordinate public health burden in terms of basic and related measurements of societal health and well being. Through the use of GIS and census tract geography, we examine far more realistically--than is possible by inference or extrapolation of similar national, state, and county measures--those public health differentials which characterize Cleveland's African American neighborhoods. Community and neighborhood public health and related inequalities appear to be easily visualized and understood at the census tract level of geography and the results provide important, if not alarming, evidence of African American citizens in distress. Key variables examined include neighborhood standardized measures of poverty and unemployment, environmental lead exposures, maternal prenatal care, infant mortality, access to health care, and years of potential life lost. The findings also suggest the indispensable role of geoscience and spatial-statistical tools in (1) assisting state and local planners and policymakers in the justification and allocation of more cost-effective public health and disease prevention investment, especially in light of sparse budgets, and (2) sounding what may well be potentially a national alarm on similar or related public health inequalities in other urban U.S. African American communities.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, those in attendance will be able to

• Apply a replicable evidence-based template for the spatial statistical analysis of community or neighborhood health inequalities in urban areas;
• Identify disadvantaged public health populations in Cleveland's neighborhoods or census tracts;
• Define key measures of standardized health outcomes for comparable neighborhood analysis in other similar urban locations;
• Describe the essential role of geographic scale e.g., state, county, city and census tract, in assessing minority public health inequalities;
• Articulate the geoscience contribution for the support of cost-effective investment and related policy decisions at the neighborhood level in urban areas.

Keywords: Minority Health,

Related Web page: www.cdc.gov/nchs/gis.htm

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.