Nova Scotia Launches Interactive Health Atlas to Guide Resource Allocation
Dalhousie University, with support from Nova Scotia Health and the provincial government, has launched the Nova Scotia Health Atlas, an interactive online tool that maps demographic, health, social, and environmental data across the province.
Nova Scotia has introduced a new interactive, online tool called the Nova Scotia Health Atlas, designed to map demographic, health, social, and environmental data across the province. The project was led by Dalhousie University with support from Nova Scotia Health and the provincial government.
Daniel Rainham, a professor at Dalhousie University's School of Health and Human Performance and academic fellow at the Centre for Planetary Health and Sustainable Care, spearheaded the initiative. The atlas displays data on population, age, economic security, social diversity, air quality, green space, well-water quality, and smoking rates. The map is colour-coded to allow users to compare their community or region with other parts of the province at a glance.
Data sources for the atlas include the census, satellite environmental information, government departments, and studies conducted at Dalhousie. Rainham stated that melanoma rates appear higher in wealthier areas of the province, potentially due to outdoor work or vacations to sunny locales.
The atlas is intended to help government decision-makers determine how best to allocate health resources and identify important areas for investment in prevention, screening, and care. It also provides data useful to epidemiologists, public health officials, and non-governmental organizations, and may spark new research ideas regarding community-level health and socioeconomic issues.