The aim of this week‘s project was to determine whether relationships exist between pollution and asthma hospitilization rates in the 9 counties of the San Francisco Bay Area, and thus where best to allocate pubic health funds in terms of staffing and supplies.
Public Health Analysis. Part 1. Demographics
Part 1 focused on how many people lived in each county, where the largest numbers of uninsured people lived and whether there was a correlation between lack of insurance and indirect indicators of poverty (race and female-headed households).
Public Health Analysis. Part 2. Take a closer look at Asthma
In Part 2 we looked at the relationship between asthma hospitilization rates, pollution and racial composition of the population. As can be seen in the map below, the proportion of African Americans in a county was strongly correlated with the asthma hospitilization rates.
Unfortunately I ran out of time to complete all the maps. This was a somewhat frustrating week as the goalposts shifted in terms of deliverables. However, I guess that happens with deliverables in the real world too. Hopefully the coming projects will go more smoothly as we now have a better understanding of how this module will work.
