From healthy start to hurricane Katrina: using GIS to eliminate disparities in perinatal health.

This paper provides a summary of the invited talk at the 2007 CDC & ATSDR 11th Biennial Symposium on Statistical Methods conference in which a university-non-profit collaboration targeted the elimination of racial disparities in perinatal health with the use of a Geographic Information System (GIS). This program will be described in four temporal stages; the pre-program early years (1999--2001) where the health burden is defined, leading to the Healthy Start years (2001--2005), in which spatial analyses, methods to effectively disseminate GIS results, the creation of the Baton Rouge Healthy Start database, and a move toward a conceptual goal of creating a holistic neighborhood GIS-health model are all described. The Katrina years (September 2005--early 2006) portrays the impact of the disaster and how the collaboration changed as resources from both were directed toward both response and recovery. The final section of the paper, the Post-Katrina years (early 2006 and ongoing) describes how the health landscape of Louisiana, including Baton Rouge as well as New Orleans, has worsened after the storms. An argument is made that the relationships and GIS structure developed during the collaboration's pre-Katrina years, even though stretched, provide the flexibility to analyze and cope with a Katrina-type shock to the system.