Digital Mapping Tool
Community Mapping
Community Mapping, also called Public Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PPGIS), is a tool that can be used to tell a story about what is happening in our communities.
The information collected can be analyzed with a range of different types of statistical analyses to identify relationships with other data, such as socioeconomic data to view changes over time. Community mapping can be used to identify “hot spots” which can be extremely useful in targeting interventions.
II.1. What is Community Mapping?
Community mapping is a process of creating maps to gain a visual representation of community-specific data from community assessment organized by geography.
For example, it is possible to track where the best community assess are, or the most important challenges, by marking these sites on your community map. You can also track where your community needs you to be, allowing you to answer the question …where are the underserved individuals in my service area?
Many outreach programs can use community mapping to identify client housing areas, potential transportation barriers (such as a neighborhood with little or no accessible bus lines), and to target and track prime outreach sites. Visually presenting this data is especially useful because:
- it is easier to identify and analyze patterns based on location
- provides a visual way of quickly and vividly communicating those patterns to a broad audience
II.2. When Will Be A Good Time To Map?
As part of the community assessment process, right after the data is collected, in order to facilitate not only the analysis but also the reporting at the end. We recommend using community mapping.
A geographic interpretation of the data on the earth surface will enhance the reading and will allow us to understand better the interaction between the different topics collected. For example; In a map it is easier to understand how lack of public transportation is affecting the engagement of the community in events, or how people at risk for HIV cluster around poverty, drug use, etc.
II.3. Using Community Mapping on HIV Prevention
Over the past 30 years, prevention efforts have helped to dramatically reduce the rate of HIV infections in the United States. At the height of the epidemic, in 1985, 130,000 new infections were reported.
That number declined to 41,000 by 2010. Since 2013, however, the number of new cases per year has held steady at around 39,000 per year (38,739 in 2017), prompting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to conclude that “progress in HIV prevention has stalled.”
In a February 2019 report, the CDC said that “the decline in new cases has plateaued because effective HIV prevention and treatment are not adequately reaching those who would benefit most from them.”
Identifying the populations at high risk for HIV infection and creating targeted collaborative, multifaceted and educational interventions, will reduce the documented disparities related to HIV care and prevention. The goal of prevention today is to improve the ability to identify individuals and communities at high risk for infection and to implement data-based strategies for prevention.
