Mapping health on the Internet: A new tool for environmental justice and public health research

This paper examines the prospects for integrating Internet platform GIS or ‘web-GIS’ into environmental justice and related public health research. Specifically, we document the development of a web-GIS created for investigating relationships between health, air quality and socioeconomic factors in Hamilton, Canada. After development of the web-GIS site, we assembled a focus group of public health professionals to test functionality and render opinions about the potential of the site and geographic information in their program implementation. Results show overwhelming support for the further integration of GIS into public health practice. The results also underscore the potential of web-GIS to alleviate concerns of cost and data availability that often limit the use of GIS in community debates centred on environmental justice issues.