Building a GIS Database to Describe Nutrition, Physical Activity and Oral Health Environment in Lewis County

Principal Investigator: Donna Johnson

This project is the first step in a proposed larger, multiyear effort to respond to concerns community leaders have expressed about the prevalence of childhood overweight and dental caries in Lewis County. Eventually, we propose to engage the community in well-planned interventions and community-based participatory research that will begin to answer questions about the relationships between overweight, dental caries and environmental factors. Our long-term goal is to develop interventions that will reduce the disparities associated with oral health and overweight.

For this phase of the project our specific aims are to:

1. Build a GIS database for Lewis County from existing data that describes the physical, social and economic environments of the county, geographic access to healthy foods, fluoridated water, physical activity, medical and dental health care, health outcomes, and other data of interest to community leaders.

2. Engage the Lewis County Community Health Partnership in planning, updating and using a GIS database as a tool for addressing health disparities, especially those associated with oral health, nutrition and physical activity in Lewis County.

3. Pilot methodologies for exploring relationships between spatial data and health outcomes at the aggregate level.