Background: Determining a community's health care access needs and testing
interventions to improve access are difficult. This challenge is compounded
by the task of translating the relevant data into a format that is clear a
nd persuasive to policymakers and funding agencies. Geographic information
systems can analyze and transform complex data from Various sources into ma
ps that illustrate problems effortlessly for experts and nonexperts.
Objective: To combine the patient data of a community health center (CHC) w
ith health care survey data to display the CHC service area, the community'
s health care access needs, and relationships among access, poverty, and po
litical boundaries.
Design: Georeferencing, analyzing, and mapping information from 2 databases
.
Setting: Boone County, Missouri.
Participants: Community health center patients and survey respondents.
Main Outcome Measures: Maps that define the CHC service area and patient de
mographics and show poor health care access in relation to the CHC service
area, CHC utilization in relation to poverty, and rates of health care acce
ss by geopolitical region.
Results: The CHC serves a distinctly different area than originally targete
d. Subpopulations with unmet health care access needs and poverty were iden
tified by census tract. These underserved populations fell within geopoliti
cal boundaries that were easily linked to their elected officials.
Conclusions: Geographic information systems are powerful tools for combinin
g disparate data in a visual format to illustrate complex relationships tha
t affect health care access. These systems can help evaluate interventions,
inform-health services research, and guide health care policy.