PNR Staff Travel to APHA 2015

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend the American Public Health Association (APHA) annual meeting in Chicago, where I got to meet the people behind some of the resources I teach about a present a poster about the Response and Recovery App in Washington (RRAIN) app and project, led by the University of Washington Health Sciences Library. The meeting kicked off with a powerful opening general session featured several speakers, including U.S. Surgeon Dr. General Vivek Murthy, who spoke about the National Prevention Council, known as one of the crown jewels of the Affordable Care Act. Dr. Murthy’s talk set the tone for the next few days: health belongs in all policies and together, we can make a difference in the health of our communities. Many presentations highlighted health disparities via socioeconomic and political climates and focused on uncovering data to facilitate movement toward equity. One presentation that struck me was about the use of mapping data to illustrate life expectancy among neighborhoods in small geographic areas, by ZIP code. Presenters from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, producer of the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps, and Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University showed off some of the ways that life expectancy data can be organized and mapped (see VCU’s Mapping Life Expectancy pages). The team spoke about the nuts and bolts of the data, as well as the process of making maps accessible by focusing ...
Source: Dragonfly - Category: Databases & Libraries Authors: Tags: News From NN/LM PNR Public Health Source Type: news