Environmental Health Data Types for Health Analytics

This chapter introduces environmental health data types for use in health analytics. We discuss how various factors lead to the overall health risk and safety of individual persons, and that while the official physical environment contribution to an individual’s overall health and wellbeing is reported as being 10% the actual contribution is greater. We discuss the intersectionality between the environment and an individual’s overall healthcare (including healthcare access), and impact on socioeconomic factors and other aspects that contribute more to an individual’s overall health and wellbeing. Therefore, the contribution of the environment is greater than often appreciated. With this in mind, we cover environmental datasets at different levels of geographic granularity, including country-level, state-level, county-level, census-tract level, and point level (latitude/longitude). We provide insights and examples of datasets developed by Governmental agencies, non-profit organizations, and researchers. We cover how to integrate data at the country-level to provide insights, models, and analysis. We lightly touch on geospatial analysis. We instruct the readers on how to make visual maps showing the different exposures in different countries around the world. After reading this chapter, you should be able to confidently answer the following questions: