Internship Experience
GIS Intern at the Western Youth Network, Boone, NC (Summer 2019)
The Western Youth Network (WYN) is a local, non-profit organization whose mission is to impact the community by empowering the lives of children within its five-county service area. As part of this commitment, I worked with WYN's Community Health Team to create web-based maps for a Community Behavioral Health Integration Initiative grant project. The objective focused on Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), which are multi-faceted socioeconomic, environmental, and health-related factors that impact an individual's and a community's life. I utilized Esri's product of ArcGIS Online to complete the web-based maps and used ArcMap during different portions of the project.
Interactive Web Map
This map includes multiple layers and data sets of Watauga County, North Carolina including:
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25 Social Determinants of Health factors collected from the American Community Survey
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16 Community Resource layers of locations from MAPSCorps data of Watauga County
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15 AppalCART route and stop locations
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2 Food Resource layers of locations of food pantries from the Watauga Food Council Food Web information and USDA Food and Nutrition Summer Feeding Programs
SDOH Story Map
This story map features 8 select SDOH factors from the interactive map, and one layer of resource locations benefitting those negatively affected by these SDOH factors.
This interactive story map from ArcGIS Online provides individuals information about SDOH with detailed descriptions of the different factors on each tab.
This map's primary use is to show individuals, without previous knowledge of SDOH, important variables impacting Watauga County with details of how these variables impact lives.
Bivariate SDOH Story Map
This story map contains 9 bivariate maps within the tabs. Each bivariate map is showcasing the relationship between two SDOH variables.
A bivariate map is a type of choropleth map that is comparing two variables in one map with the legend showing the resulting relationships. This map allows for the data to be visualized by the comparisons being displayed; further, having comparisons gives the necessary information to be able to know which areas need the
most help and support.
These bivariate maps were very interesting! I enjoyed making these maps for this internship project, as I taught myself how to make Bivariate maps first within ArcGIS Pro, and then within ArcGIS Online (AGO) with AGO bivariate map properties.
Internship Final Report
This final report describes the processes I used to create the 3 web maps.
GIS Intern at the Western Youth Network, Boone, NC (Summer 2020)
During the Summer of 2020, I worked as a GIS Intern with the Western Youth Network (WYN) again to continue the study of Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), as knowing the patterns of those variables is still vitally important.
Following the work from the previous summer, I created multiple web-based maps for all of WYN's service counties of SDOH variables along with other factors. WYN's Community Health Team provides multiple services encompassing the counties of Watauga, Avery, Ashe, Alleghany, and Wilkes Counties within the High Country. Another area of concern that I studied during the internship was data validity, specifically with the American Community Survey (ACS) data and the reporting in rural areas. As WYN's service counties cover a large majority of rural areas, I explored Margins of Error (MOEs) as well as Life Expectancy to answer questions related to data validity. I developed a web-based map of the MOEs including all the service counties, and I created multiple static maps of the service counties of the Life Expectancy data. Additionally, I conducted a Multi-Criteria Evaluation (MCE) spatial analysis of the SDOH variables for all service counties. I created multiple static maps and a detailed data report from the MCE. I utilized Esri products of ArcGIS Online and ArcGIS Pro to complete these projects during the internship.
Interactive Web Maps of SDOH Variables for WYN's Service Counties
Due to the multi-faceted nature of SDOH, the best web map format is an interactive web map application through ArcGIS Online (AGO). The Basic Viewer application creates an interactive experience that allows users to explore the patterns and trends of the SDOH variables throughout a service county.
Five separate interactive web maps were created for each service county of WYN. Each Census tract for the SDOH layers or Community Resource Locations contain detailed pop-up information.
The interactive maps contain (Census tract-level data):
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36 SDOH Layers from American Community Survey Data (2018, 5-year estimates)
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Approximately 23 Community Resource Locations layers from a combination of (number of layers vary based on county):
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Homeland Infrastructure Foundation-Level Data (HIFLD)
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NC OneMap
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Health Professional Shortage Area (Health Resources and Services Administration)
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Watauga County only - MAPSCorps, Watauga Food Web Food Council (9 layers)
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The Community Resource layers include point location layers as well as layers of counts that include a number of the specified resource per Census tract.
Story Map : Behavioral and Mental Health Analysis
Esri released a new version of Story Maps that allows for a better web-based map interface. I used the newest update to create an informative story map of Behavioral and Mental Health related data. Using data of substance use such as alcohol and opioid data along with suicide data, maps were created for each service county (county-level data). Alcohol data was acquired from the North Carolina Alcohol Data Dashboard from the North Carolina Injury and Prevention Branch (NC Department of Health and Human Services). Opioid data was collected from the CDC National Center for Health Statistics. Suicide data was acquired from the North Carolina Violent Death Reporting System. These data sources relate to substance use and mental health. This story map includes interactive maps with descriptive text that explains the associated variables giving a descriptive illustration of behavioral and mental health across WYN's service counties.
DATA VALIDITY
Life Expectancy
Life Expectancy data was obtained from the CDC within the National Center for Health Statistics part of the U.S. Small-area Life Expectancy Estimates Project. Within public health research, life expectancy is used as a health metric. For this SDOH study it is used to compare the SDOH variables vulnerability to the age ranges to show how SDOH variables are affecting overall health.
Margins of Error
Margins of Error (MOEs) are often an overlooked aspect of data; however, when using techniques to map MOEs can be used to illustrate a range of values. The range of values for SDOH variables provided with MOEs indicates the percentages or estimates the SDOH variables can vary between. MOEs were found by searching the SDOH variables through the U.S. Census Bureau ACS data. For the SDOH variables studied not all MOEs were found for each SDOH variable; 29 SDOH variables had corresponding MOEs values.
The web-based map includes all five service counties, and each layer is labeled with the county name. The map is made within ArcGIS Online in which each Census tract represents the SDOH variable by graduated circle symbology, and the pop-up information contains the MOEs values. Using an Esri article blog to create this web map, I configured Arcade expressions using the MOEs data to create a MOEs value range.
Spatial Analysis : Multi-Criteria Evaluation
In order to properly evaluate spatial patterns, it is critical to conduct spatial analysis. The SDOH variables were categorized to help the MCE process. The process includes reclassifiying the variables based on their value; lower values receive a 1, higher values receive a 5. Based on reclassifying, a total field is calculating adding these new reclassify values together. The MCE maps include this total reclassified field, using Standard Deviation classification to show outliers, as well as a multi-layout map of the total reclassify field with select SDOH variables. A detailed data report was written to evaluate the spatial distribution of SDOH variables in the service counties, and provides information of where WYN's Community Health Team should evaluate services.
Internship Final Report
This PDF file contains the final report explaining the process of creating these multiple GIS products.