Health GIS Tidbits - 4/21/11
Dr Van Sickle left CDC and founded a company, Asthmapolis, which is based in Madison, Wisconsin. The result is Spiroscout, an inhaler with a built-in Global Positioning System locator and (in advanced models) a wireless link to the internet.
It's not the first such inhaler, but it's far smaller than past versions and it has at least two benefits: indications for individuals about their own use and crowdsourced data (stripped of identifying details) for a broader look at usage patterns.
Environmental access to PA [physical activity] resources (determined via GIS-based assessment of the number of gyms, schools, trails, parks and athletic fields within 0.5 miles of each participant's home) moderated the association between social support and PA; among adolescents with high levels of environmental resources, greater social support was associated with students participating in a greater number of sports in school, whereas no such relationship emerged among adolescents with low environmental resources.
International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity 2011, 8:34 via 7th Space
The authors, Richard Layte of the ESRI [Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), Dublin, Ireland] and colleagues, say the results showed that as the distance to the nearest supermarket increased, it was accompanied by a small but significant decrease in the healthiness of a person's diet.
This is the first time that this link has been established in research outside the US, where healthy 'food deserts' have been found in areas of social deprivation.
