title: Visualizing the infrastructure of US healthcare using Internet GIS: a community health informatics approach for reducing health disparities.
abstract: Policy makers and healthcare providers often lack the resources or information to make effective healthcare decisions that impact their communities. Information must therefore be delivered to in a way that maximizes healthcare decision making. This paper examines the infrastructure of U.S. Healthcare using an Internet-based geographic information system (GIS). Internet GIS assists communities in accessing health information via the Internet, thereby leveling the playing field between urban and less affluent rural communities in the United States. A Community Health Informatics approach of incorporating "place" in identifying and reducing health dis-parities and transforming patients to active consumers of health care may ameliorate the impact of devolution and provide a foundation for effective decision support. The Internet GIS includes data visualization tools that provide the public, health care providers, and policy makers with tools to examine socio-economic and demographic factors that impact the distribution of health services
authors.affiliation: Department of Health Management and Informatics, University of Missouri, Columbia, 65211, USA. fulcherc@missouri.edu
authors.forename: Christopher L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Fulcher
authors.forename: Catherine E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Kaukinen
mesh_terms: D018672:Community Health Planning; D003695:Delivery of Health Care; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D006291:Health Policy; D006297:Health Services Accessibility; D006801:Humans; D033181:Information Dissemination; D020407:Internet; D011050:Policy Making; D040442:Public Health Informatics; D014481:United States