Krieger Nancy
J Urban Health. 2006 May;83(3):355-61. doi: 10.1007/s11524-006-9040-y.
In 2006, the U.S. celebrates the 100th birthday of the census tract. These geographic units, born out of concerns for urban well-being, were first proposed in 1906 to provide a "convenient and scientific city map system" for the City of New York. They were employed for the first time in the U.S. census in 1910 in eight cities, via a joint effort involving the U.S. Census Bureau and state and local health departments. Initially termed "sanitary areas" because of their relevance to planning for public health and health services, census tracts are now widely used by all sectors of government and by myriad disciplines in the health, social, and geographic sciences for research as well as policy development, implementation, and evaluation. In this article, I describe the census tract's underappreciated origins, give examples of its current use in analyzing and addressing social disparities in health and health care, and discuss its continued significance and implications for population health and the public data required for informed democratic governance.
2006年，美国迎来了普查区的百岁诞辰。这些地理单元源于对城市福祉的关注，于1906年首次被提出，旨在为纽约市提供一个“便捷且科学的城市地图系统”。1910年，在美国人口普查中，它们首次在八个城市被采用，这是美国人口普查局与州和地方卫生部门共同努力的结果。由于与公共卫生和卫生服务规划相关，普查区最初被称为“卫生区域”，如今已被政府各部门以及健康、社会和地理科学等众多学科广泛用于研究以及政策制定、实施和评估。在本文中，我将描述普查区未得到充分重视的起源，举例说明其目前在分析和解决健康及医疗保健方面的社会差异中的应用，并讨论其对人口健康以及明智的民主治理所需的公共数据的持续重要性和影响。
