291404
Strategic methods for determining access to care and community health resources
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
: 2:50 p.m. - 3:10 p.m.
Disparities affecting racial-ethnic minorities present continuing challenges for chronic disease prevention and treatment. This study examines the conceptual feasibility of using a mobile application to locate and determine sufficiency of resources for mitigating manifestations of chronic disease. Mobile Health Gap Mapping can be used to develop an evaluative scoring system for alignment of community health resources to local disease burden. However, evaluating supply versus demand requires accurate accounting of products and services offered by community entities. Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping of these products and services, and determining strategic opportunities to fill gaps is a key element towards eliminating the disparities and improving local population health outcomes. Translating resource location data unto mobile platforms is also an efficient tool for health behavior and policy decision-making. The forecasted impact is strong as mobile Internet penetration (accessing mobile web and related applications) is high among minority groups compared to Whites (Hispanics: 52.9%; African-Americans: 48.9%; Asians: 48.1%; Whites: 36.3%). Using a back-end relational database, populated through environmental scans and community survey data, this mapping application will layer disease prevalence data and health resource data over geographic location data to create visual references for a user's unique healthcare profile and purpose. As costs of inequitable chronic diseases continue to constitute major portions of direct medical care expenditures among minority groups (30.6% in 2006), a solution that leverages publicly released and obtainable data, creates a feasible mechanism for transparent remediation of supply deficiencies.
Learning Areas:
Administer health education strategies, interventions and programs
Chronic disease management and prevention
Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs
Provision of health care to the public
Public health administration or related administration
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health
Learning Objectives:
Identify feasible methods to conduct environmental scans of geographic regions and input data into a consumer usable technology to ensure convenient access to health condition related resources
Keyword(s): Access to Health Care, Geographic Information Systems
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am using my public health experience and engineering background to present a concept application that is in line with the types of work I have been involved in both on the academic and professional level.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
