Integrating place-based thinking for health applications with spatial data science
Presented by Marynia Kolak (University of Chicago)
A spatial perspective isn’t (just) about making compelling visualizations, but also investigating how complex human-environment interactions impact the theory, design, methods, and infrastructure of research. Detangling how place impacts, interacts with, and/or drives factors of health outcomes for different people and neighborhoods is essential to reduce health disparities.
In this talk I’ll highlight two recent projects that engage an intersectional framework to inform how we think about health, place, and disparities. In the first, socioeconomic data was used to develop multidimensional "social determinant of health" indices and a regional typology of the continental United States (at tract scale), via dimension reduction and clustering machine learning techniques, and validated as measures associated with premature mortality within Chicago.
This place-based approach was extended to US Covid Atlas development, where distributed spatial infrastructures were used to tackle issues of disparate data sources and address the need for data-driven knowledge discovery and more sophisticated spatial analysis central to the COVID pandemic. The Atlas engaged a research coalition and incorporated principles of user-centered design to ground the direction of application development. In both cases, how research could be used for multi-sector audiences proved crucial to inform choices in science translation.
During a time of increased attention to the social determinants of health, intersectional spatial analysis may provide actionable information for key stakeholders to better understand, communicate, and transform regional health.
SoDa Labs webinar series
The SoDa Labs webinar series provides a platform for researchers around the world to present work that uses novel and alternative data and/or tools from data science and beyond to answer social science questions.
Event Details
- Date:
- 1 December 2020 at 9:00 am – 10:00 am
- Venue:
- Online
- Categories:
- Economics; Econometrics and Business Statistics; General
Description
Presented by Marynia Kolak (University of Chicago)
A spatial perspective isn’t (just) about making compelling visualizations, but also investigating how complex human-environment interactions impact the theory, design, methods, and infrastructure of research. Detangling how place impacts, interacts with, and/or drives factors of health outcomes for different people and neighborhoods is essential to reduce health disparities.
In this talk I’ll highlight two recent projects that engage an intersectional framework to inform how we think about health, place, and disparities. In the first, socioeconomic data was used to develop multidimensional "social determinant of health" indices and a regional typology of the continental United States (at tract scale), via dimension reduction and clustering machine learning techniques, and validated as measures associated with premature mortality within Chicago.
This place-based approach was extended to US Covid Atlas development, where distributed spatial infrastructures were used to tackle issues of disparate data sources and address the need for data-driven knowledge discovery and more sophisticated spatial analysis central to the COVID pandemic. The Atlas engaged a research coalition and incorporated principles of user-centered design to ground the direction of application development. In both cases, how research could be used for multi-sector audiences proved crucial to inform choices in science translation.
During a time of increased attention to the social determinants of health, intersectional spatial analysis may provide actionable information for key stakeholders to better understand, communicate, and transform regional health.
SoDa Labs webinar series
The SoDa Labs webinar series provides a platform for researchers around the world to present work that uses novel and alternative data and/or tools from data science and beyond to answer social science questions.
Event Contact
- Name
- SoDaLabs@monash.edu
- Phone
- Organisation