RESUMEN
Urban environmental factors such as air quality, heat islands, and access to greenspaces and community amenities impact public health. Some vulnerable populations such as low-income groups, children, older adults, new immigrants, and visible minorities live in areas with fewer beneficial conditions, and therefore, face greater health risks. Planning and advocating for equitable healthy urban environments requires systematic analysis of reliable spatial data to identify where vulnerable populations intersect with positive or negative urban/environmental characteristics. To facilitate this effort in Canada, we developed HealthyPlan.City ( https://healthyplan.city/ ), a freely available web mapping platform for users to visualize the spatial patterns of built environment indicators, vulnerable populations, and environmental inequity within over 125 Canadian cities. This tool helps users identify areas within Canadian cities where relatively higher proportions of vulnerable populations experience lower than average levels of beneficial environmental conditions, which we refer to as Equity priority areas. Using nationally standardized environmental data from satellite imagery and other large geospatial databases and demographic data from the Canadian Census, HealthyPlan.City provides a block-by-block snapshot of environmental inequities in Canadian cities. The tool aims to support urban planners, public health professionals, policy makers, and community organizers to identify neighborhoods where targeted investments and improvements to the local environment would simultaneously help communities address environmental inequities, promote public health, and adapt to climate change. In this paper, we report on the key considerations that informed our approach to developing this tool and describe the current web-based application.
RESUMEN
Abstract Low quality drinking water has been directly correlated to the occurrence of waterborne illnesses in northern Brazil. To minimize health risks related to the water supply, the Ministry of Health has proposed the implementation of the National Program for the Surveillance of Drinking Water Quality (VIGIAGUA) in Brazilian municipalities. Focusing on the Legal Amazon region, the present study demonstrates a historical account of the percentage of municipalities included in the VIGIAGUA program in place, which in 2013 reached 45.1% of the region municipalities. This study also identifies vulnerable areas in terms of the water quality in the states of Amapá, Amazonas and Maranhão. With this analysis of the current status of the drinking water supply, this study intends to support and direct the strategic efforts of environmental health monitoring in the region.
Resumo A baixa qualidade da água para consumo humano está diretamente relacionada à ocorrência de doenças de transmissão hídrica. Para minimizar riscos à saúde e vulnerabilidades relacionadas ao abastecimento de água, o Ministério da Saúde propõe a implantação do Programa Nacional de Vigilância da Qualidade da Água para Consumo Humano (Vigiagua) aos municípios brasileiros. Focando na região da Amazônia Legal, o presente estudo demonstra uma série histórica do percentual de municípios com o programa Vigiagua implantado, atingindo em 2013 a marca de 45,1% dos municípios dessa região. O estudo ainda identifica áreas muito vulneráveis nos estados do Amapá, Amazonas e Maranhão para a questão da qualidade da água. Com esta análise da situação do abastecimento de água para consumo humano pretende-se subsidiar e direcionar as ações estratégicas da vigilância em saúde ambiental na região.