Summer 2017 SAVI Online Magazine Emagazine Summer 2017 mn and ae edits - web | Page 7

CASE STUDY | STUDENT RESEARCHERS’ USE OF SAVI
UNDERSTANDING THE “WHY” BEHIND THE
“WHAT” IN THE SPREAD OF DISEASE
A team whose players
complement each other
well is sometimes
described as “more than
the sum of its parts.”
Patrick T.S. Lai was
drawn to Central Indiana
PATRICK T.S. LAI
because such synergies
are emerging in the realm of health care.
Lai, a doctoral candidate in the School
of Informatics and Computing at IUPUI,
says that the region has two resources that
are valuable in themselves: a network of
comprehensive electronic health records,
called the Indi ana Network for Patient Care,
and The Polis Center’s SAVI database, which
offers comprehensive community data.
By combining data from these resources
for his dissertation work, Lai is trying to
understand which neighborhoods have the
highest rates of two sexually transmitted
diseases (STDs), chlamydia and gonorrhea.
But, he’s also aiming to understand why
those neighborhoods have higher rates.
Getting at the “why” requires the kind of
rich neighborhood profiles that SAVI offers,
which when used with health record data
“is a great opportunity to understand the
underlying factors of disease.”
Certain social factors influence
and predict the rate of STDs in a given
neighborhood. These “social determinants”
include median income, education level,
population density, and the unemployment
rate, among others.
It’s well know that such factors play a
role in disease transmission, but the exact
relationship isn’t clear. Lai aims “to identify
which social determinants contribute most”
to STD rates in a neighborhood.
His work is important, he says, because
“knowing some of the biggest contributors
could guide us in thinking about how we
can effectively combat and reduce the
spread of disease.”
Another example of how SAVI is
fostering healthcare synergies is the
community public health course offered by
Barbara Blackford, an assistant professor in
the School of Nursing at Marian College.
Blackford assigns groups of nursing
students to conduct a “windshield survey”
of certain census tracts. Each group
drives around its assigned area, making
notes of the community’s assets and
liabilities. Then, they use SAVI to flesh
out their observations with hard data
about the prevailing socioeconomic and
physical conditions, and each group gives a
presentation about what they’ve learned.
Before Blackford’s students began
using SAVI five years ago, they drew on a
variety of scattered sources to supplement
their windshield surveys.
“SAVI makes it so much easier,” she
says. “It’s been a fantastic tool to help my
students consider social and environmental
determinants of health.”
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