The UCLA Center for Research, Education, and Strategic Communication on Minority Health Disparities

"The Public Health Disparities Geocoding Project:
Monitoring US Social Inequalities in Health"

Nancy Krieger, Ph.D.

Harvard School of Public Health, Department of Society, Human Development, and Health

Associate Director of the Harvard Center
for Society and Health

Friday, May 7^th 2004
9:45-10:45am
2343 Public Policy Building
University of California, Los Angeles
Los Angeles, CA 90095

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Goals/Desired Outcomes:

The goal of this session is to assist participants in developing appropriate measures of social class (individual, household, and neighborhoods) using geocoding, especially for population-based monitoring of social inequalities in health. This will give participants the ability to identify social determinants that contribute to deleterious physical and mental health outcomes.

Objectives - By the end of this talk, participants will be able to:

Define what is meant by an "area-based socioeconomic measure" (ABSM).
Identify the pros and cons of the use of census block groups, census tracts, and ZIP Codes in the identification of social determinants of health and mental health outcomes.
Explain why both the choice and type of ABSM and the geographic level at which it is measured matters for monitoring socioeconomic inequalities in health and mental health.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Nancy Krieger, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Public Health in the Department of Society, Human Development, and Health at the Harvard School of Public Health and Associate Director of the Harvard Center for Society and Health. She received her Ph.D. in Epidemiology from the University of California at Berkeley in 1989. Dr. Krieger is a social epidemiologist, with a background in biochemistry, philosophy of science, and the history of public health, combined with 20 years of experience as an activist in issues involving social justice, science, and health. Her work focuses on three aspects of social inequalities in health: (a) etiologic studies, (b) methods for improving monitoring of social inequalities in health, and (c) development of theoretical frameworks to guide work on understanding and addressing social determinants of health. In 1994 she co-founded, and still chairs, the Spirit of 1848 Caucus of the American Public Health Association.

ABOUT THE LECTURE

This lecture is presented by UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, a CMA-accredited provider, in association with the UCLA Center for Research, Education, Training, and Strategic Communication on Minority Health Disparities (CRETSCMHD) in conjunction with the Ralph & Goldy Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies as part of an all-day workshop on Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

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