The moving target: a geographic index of relative wellbeing

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have been widely used by health planners and professionals to map and describe disease occurrence, spread, and exposure. Increasingly, GIS is being used to measure accessibility to health services in order to better manage scarce resources and to ensure equity and accountability. We argue that health planners can use readily available census data to understand the demands and needs of particular population by identifying key indicators that have a direct or indirect impact on individual health and community well-being. We present an Index of Relative Wellbeing, a weighted basket of 10 key variables from the Census that can be used to describe the health status of a particular census area. Health planners can use this index within a GIS to conduct spatial and temporal analyses. Our research demonstrates that the spatial distribution of health inequalities can be carefully documented and be directly used in the policymaking arena.