Rural Health Issues and Their Investigation in a GIS Environment

Abstract

The previous chapters have provided a background in factors related to infant and maternal health and the various ways these individual and neighborhood characteristics can be studied in a GIS environment. Though rich in information for approaching investigations in urban areas, this book has yet to delve into these issues from a rural perspective, wherein some of the salient variables differ and certainly these data require additional understanding for use with GIS. Therefore, this chapter introduces some of the topics that could be included in health investigations in rural areas, along with some of the caveats for working with and interpreting the GIS results.