A colleague sent this interesting link today - check out these maps of the geographic distribution of obesity and diabetes in the US. You can see how the distribution has changed over time at the state level of resolution; you can also see how distributions vary at the county level within states, as well as across racial/ethnic categories.
It looks like Milwaukee County has higher levels than the state of Wisconsin as a whole. But some of these data are puzzling... why do the numbers seem to drop so quickly when you cross the state line from Nebraska to Colorado, or Illinois to Missouri?
Other thing that is interesting is how indian reservations pop out across the west
ReplyDeleteGood observation! That caught my notice as well - the Wisconsin county with the highest rates is Menominee, which is mostly coterminous with the Menominee Indian Reservation.
ReplyDeleteThese have become increasingly important issues in American Indian/Alaska Native communities, especially in those in which traditional diets have shifted more to mainstream American diets. For more info:
http://info.ihs.gov/Diabetes.asp
http://aspe.hhs.gov/hsp/07/AI-AN-obesity/execsum.htm
We discussed this map, at length, in my intro to maps course. It was a very productive discussion.
ReplyDeleteWe got into discussing food deserts and also discussed Stephen Von Worley's work:
http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2009/09/where-buffalo-roamed.html
http://mapscroll.blogspot.com/2010/03/fast-food-nation.html
PS this is Mike Finewood, don't ask about the profile name.
Mike - I'm curious as to what some of the observations were in your intro class. Anything you can share? I look forward to checking out the other maps!
ReplyDeleteNothing shocking. The premise of the course is thinking critically about maps, so we spent a lot of time talking about map construction and author/audience/message. For this map, we got into correlation versus causation, and if this was a good representation of a larger perceived obesity problem. Van Worley is an artist, so we considered his way of representing an issue versus the CDC map. All in all, it was an interesting discussion.
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