An Overview of the USC GeoHealth Hub

The USC GeoHealth Hub is a publicly accessible spatial data hub, focusing on health-related datasets and information. We aim to encourage collaboration among the communities we engage and support — including, but not limited to, the Keck School of Medicine of USC, the Spatial Sciences Institute, the Southern California Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and the Southern California Environmental Health Sciences Center.

We organize the data, people, and tools necessary for you to develop content that will promote healthier lifestyles by keeping others informed. The Hub makes it easy to find intuitive ways to connect research with collaborators and constituents so that you may share your findings with the world.

The first GeoHealth Hub student team was created in 2020, comprised of Alicia Adiwidjaja, Naman Casas, and Felix Goldwasser, led by Dr. John Wilson and Beau MacDonald. Student researchers are responsible for sourcing and uploading data to add to the GeoHealth Hub’s data catalog, adding new website features, and determining proper categorization and accreditation for datasets on the Hub. The project was taken over in 2022 by students Violet Li and Amanda Rago, who continue to update resources and add new datasets to the GeoHealth Hub.

The format of the data available on the site range from feature layers, layer packages, and web maps to CSV files, Excel files, and document links. There are various data categories for public health, disease, environment, healthcare, demography, mental health, climate change, addiction, cancer, pollution, and nutrition among others. The datasets on the Hub mainly focus on California, but there are quite a few datasets available that encompass the United States as well. An effort is made to keep the datasets as up-to-date as possible, as the team is consistently searching for new datasets and making updates as necessary. The spatial resolution ranges from census block group, exact address, and zip code to city, county, or state.

 Index of Dissimilarity 

The Index of Dissimilarity dataset is a polygon feature created by our supporter —  USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center . The attributes contain measures of residential segregation of different ethnic groups in the census blocks in California using the method from the United States Census Bureau. The metadata of this dataset is also stored in the hub as a CSV file.

 Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s Social Vulnerability Index (SVI) is a tool to help public health officials and emergency response planners identify and map the communities that will most likely need support before, during, and after a hazardous event. It is a comprehensive and interdisciplinary index that tracts 15 social factors into four categories: Socioeconomics Status, Household Composition & Disability, Minority Status & Language, and Housing Type & Transportation. Documents and more information can be found on the  CDC page .

 Air Quality Data For Health-Related Applications 

Air Quality Data for Health-Related Applications dataset from EARTHDATA provides air quality data for health-related research and applications. Currently, this collection consists of the daily and annual PM2.5 concentrations, daily 8-Hour maximum and annual O3 concentrations, and daily and annual NO2 Concentrations. To download the data needs to sign in on EarthData, so USC GeoHealth Hub embedded the page and attached the  link  to provide the access to the dataset.

 National Mental Health Facilities 

The National Mental Health Facilities dataset is a point feature of federal, state, and local government facilities and private facilities that provide mental health treatment services from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Their properties include the name, address, phone number, and service code info of the facilities. This data was geocoded by us, after preprocessing a CSV file with only the address information instead of a precise latitude and longitude. More documentation can be found at the  SAMHSA site .

Interactive tools are maps in a ready-to-use format. The GeoHealth Hub collected and organized those tools from different sources and embedded them for users to explore those tools by themselves. They are a resource where the user can actually interact with the map by clicking on various cities/states or symbols in order to find out information.

 EPA EJScreen  

The EPA EJScreen is an environmental justice mapping and screening tool that provides a nationally consistent dataset and approach, combining environmental and demographic indicators in maps and reports. This tool helps to highlight geographic areas and the extent to which they may be candidates for further review, including additional consideration, analysis, or outreach.

 PurpleAir 

The PurpleAir interactive air quality map uses sensor data to calculate the mass concentration of PM1.0, PM2.5, and PM10. This tool is best used when looking into pollution in California, and the map uses real-time data.

If you have a clear goal to find in mind, type the keywords in the search bar and press enter. If you are looking for data of specific types, categories, tags, and sources, try using the left-side checkbox filters.

Take an overlook of the data and play with it by zooming in on certain areas of the map. Open the attribute table to see the fields and values. Draw points, lines, and polygons on the map and filter the data with what you drew. Click on the data feature to see the attributes of the point, line, or polygon shown on the pop-up panel.

Click "View Full Details" on the previous page to see the description, documents, and source of the data. Metadata and documents are crucial components of data management as they provide information about the data that allows users to understand, interpret and effectively use the data.

One choice, click "Download" on the previous page to download data for local use. Another, click "More" and "Open in ArcGIS Map View" to use the datasets to do some analysis or make some maps directly on ArcGIS Online.

The site also contains outputs from those data, including journal articles, StoryMaps, and more.