title: Image-diagnosis: visualization of community health levels and the impacts of determinants thereof.
abstract: The objective of this study is to develop a tool that visualizes health-level of communities and the determinants thereof. We developed Image-Diagnosis, which consists of mapping and star-plotting procedures. This paper presents this method by applying the statistics in Tokyo. The mapping shows the spatial variance of health-level and health-determining factors; star-plotting depicts health-level, as the circle, and health-determining factors, as the arms, in a star-shaped diagram. The animation of star-plots presents variations in health levels resulting from the specified changes in health-determining factors according to the models. Potential contribution to the decision making in urban health policy was discussed.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health and Environmental Science, School of Medicine, Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Japan.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Nakamura
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Takano
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Takeuchi
mesh_terms: D006285:Health Planning; D006291:Health Policy; D006305:Health Status Indicators; D006306:Health Surveys; D006801:Humans; D014041:Tokyo; D014504:Urban Health