If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much can a map tell us?

According to Alex Cooper, who works at Child Care Aware of America, quite a lot — including a child’s access to various social determinants of health, such as vaccinations, child care centers and socioeconomic opportunities.

During Wednesday’s APHA 2024 session “Epidemiology and Data: COVID-19 Impact on Child Health and Vaccination Uptake,” Cooper explained how geographic information system data — or GIS — can be used to map these factors. 

“Child care and public health have similar goals, like child development, nutrition and preventive measures like vaccinations,” he said. “We need to work together toward these goals.”

Cooper, using data from the National Association of City and County Health Officials and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, mapped three items across the U.S. 

First was the Child Opportunity Index, which is a dataset with three indicators: education, environment and socioeconomic status. Second was the Social Vulnerability Index, which uses many variables to measure vulnerability to human-made or natural disasters. Essentially, Cooper said, the Social Vulnerability Index is a measurement of the disaster preparedness and response capabilities in a geographic area.

The third area Cooper and his colleagues mapped was child care infrastructure, from pediatricians’ offices to COVID-19 vaccination sites to day care centers. 

The interactive map is really three maps overlaid on each other, Cooper said. He and his team worked with local and state health departments to collect and analyze their data. The resulting interactive map allows users to click on their city or county and see what child care and wellness resources are there. 

“(This map) is just a tool; it’s a starting point,” Cooper said. “You are the experts on your own communities.”

However, Cooper ran into challenges with data use. The permissions for use and public display of the vaccine data from the CDC expired due to COVID-19 data use agreements with state governments. This resulted in a map that lacked vaccine information but still included other measures of child health. 

The expiration of the CDC data led Cooper to realize there is an urgent need to plan for potential challenges to accessing data. Data sharing and cooperation can strengthen future public health collaborations, he said.