What if there was a tool that could break down a neighborhood’s socioeconomic measures, like income, education, employment and housing quality, to give us a sense of how those factors influence overall health, and maybe even inform where to target health resources and social interventions.  

On today’s podcast we talk with Dr. Amy Kind from the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, who developed that tool, the Neighborhood Atlas.  The Neighborhood Atlas uses the “Area Deprivation Index,” which includes 17 measures of education, housing quality and poverty, and can be used free by anyone by going to the Neighborhood Atlas website (https://www.neighborhoodatlas.medicine.wisc.edu/).

In addition to talking with Amy about the Atlas, we discuss some of the following questions:

• What is neighborhood disadvantage and what health outcomes is it linked to?
• How should providers use neighborhood disadvantage when caring for patients?
• How should health care systems use neighborhood disadvantage?
• How does the Atlas also identify areas of resilience in communities?

So take a listen and if you want to read more about it, check out Amy’s NEJM article on the topic - https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1802313