Clusters, maps, and hotspots: Small area analysis in maternal and child health
 

Clusters, Maps, and Hotspots:
Small Area Analysis in Maternal and
Child Health

DataSpeak Web Conference Series

Please join us on: Wednesday, August 12, 2015
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm ET


The Health Resources and Services Administration’s Maternal and Child Health Bureau (MCHB) is pleased to announce an upcoming DataSpeak program on small area analysis. Maternal and child health professionals are increasingly interested in how health outcomes, risk factors, and health resources vary over space and time. Knowledge about how these factors differ across small segments of the population, such as across different counties or neighborhoods, can help health professionals design interventions for the populations who are most at need. Innovative and rigorous small area analyses are needed to help inform public health decisions that can improve maternal and child health. This DataSpeak will give an overview of the applications of small area analysis for maternal and child health with real world examples based on these analyses.

Presentations will be made by:
  • Russell S. Kirby, PhD, MS, FACE is the Distinguished University Professor and Marrell Endowed Chair, Department of Community and Family Health at the University of South Florida. Dr. Kirby will set the stage by reviewing basic principles of mapping and small area analysis, using examples from the literature, and describing the features of geographic information systems (GIS).

  • Michael Kramer, PhD, MMSc., is an Assistant Professor of Epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Dr. Kramer will discuss the motivation for and several approaches to the production of statistically robust small area estimates of disease rates or other health relevant parameters. These methods are useful for mapping small area variation in disease occurrence or as inputs for subsequent spatial analysis.

  • Thomas J. Stopka, PhD, MHS, is an Assistant Professor with the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at the Tufts University School of Medicine. In his presentation, Dr. Stopka will describe the use of spatial epidemiological methods that can be employed to identify and characterize hotspot clusters of unmet needs related to nutrition supplementation and public health services.
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