Demonstrating the value of GIS in childhood obesity prevention

As the childhood obesity epidemic escalates, impacted communities with limited resources are uncertain of how best to respond. A novel way to inform childhood obesity prevention policy and intervention is to create a community place-based analysis system that allows for the analysis of obesity prevalence in comparison to variables associated with the energy balance of individuals such as diet, physical activity levels, and socioeconomic status. Currently underutilized in obesity prevention, GIS is ideal for broad-level analysis since it offers advantages related to the layering of different variables (such as food environment compared to active living context), spatial pattern visualization, and data documentation and storage. GIS can help target resources by highlighting communities with health disparities, food poverty, and few safe places where children can play. Additionally, layering multiple variables will allow policymakers to better understand complex environmental circumstances that may be contributing to obesity and design multifaceted interventions that address multiple contributors. This presentation highlights the outcomes from the prototype development of Healthy Kids GIS, a system offering online interactive mapping and a geospatial library for users of varied skill levels. Hundreds of geospatial datasets representative of broad obesity measures from public and private sources were collected, standardized, and organized to build a comprehensive geospatial database. Prototypes at the national, state and local levels were employed in partnership with pilot communities to elicit feedback and explore data resources and tool functionality. The challenges with building Healthy Kids GIS and the strategy used to produce a multi-dimensional GIS will be discussed.