Using Maps to Promote Health Equity

The Opportunity Agenda, with support from the Health Policy Institute at the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, commissioned a series of papers examining the effectiveness of web based mapping, and the role it can play in promoting health equity. The result, Using Maps to Promote Health Equity, includes scholarly, practical, technical, and historical perspectives on the usefulness of mapping.

Among the contributors is regular Directions Magazine contributor Paul Amos.

via @Wiprobono

Mapquest Adds Premium Datasets

Yesterday MapQuest announced new premium data available for use with its MapQuest Platform Enterprise Edition.

The Premium Data Sets include:

  *  US boundaries:
    -Address Parcels, Cities, Counties, States, ZIP codes, Neighborhoods, School districts, Congressional Districts, and Core Based Statistical Areas (including MSA’s).
  * US Census Data (2000):
    -Broken down by Block, Group, Tract, ZCTA, City, County and State
    -Over 400 Categories to choose
  * Premium Business Listings:
    -13+ mil US and 2+ mil Canada Business Listings
  * US Public School Locations:
    -Includes over 102,000 public schools.
  * US Traffic:
    Incident and Flow data

I asked the source of these datasets, particularly the neighborhood data. Mapquest’s reply: “MapQuest utilizes a variety of 3rd party sources to provide data as part of the Premium Data Sets Package.” The company notes these data partners.