Google Maps Mashups for Local Public Health Service Planning

Abstract

One of the key challenges in public health service planning is to reduce health inequalities at the local level. This often entails understanding the detailed profile of a local area's population and ensuring equal access to health services. Accessibility to health services, personal behaviour and lifestyles, community influences, living and working conditions, educational attainment and health literacy can all impact upon an individual's health, and their aggregated effect is clearly manifested at neighbourhood level.