A GIS software-based method to identify public health data belonging to address-defined communities

Abstract

Abstract Objective This communication presents the results of defining a tribal health jurisdiction by a combination of tribal affiliation (TA) and case address. Materials and Methods Through a county-tribal partnership, Geographic Information System (GIS) software and custom code were used to extract tribal data from county data by identifying reservation addresses in county extracts of COVID-19 case records from December 30, 2019, to December 31, 2022 (n = 374 653) and COVID-19 vaccination records from December 1, 2020, to April 18, 2023 (n = 2 355 058). Results The tool identified 1.91 times as many case records and 3.76 times as many vaccination records as filtering by TA alone. Discussion and Conclusion This method of identifying communities by patient address, in combination with TA and enrollment, can help tribal health jurisdictions attain equitable access to public health data, when done in partnership with a data sharing agreement. This methodology has potential applications for other populations underrepresented in public health and clinical research.