BIOGRAPHY

Rexford Anson-Dwamena graduated with Masters in Public Health (MPH) from Eastern Virginia Medical School (EVMS). Rexford uses Epidemiological methods, procedures, and statistical techniques and research designs to identify High Priority Areas by applying geospatial techniques (GIS software). His expertise essentially lies in predictive modeling, spatial and temporal analysis and data management. He is familiar with a wide range of geo/statistical software and programs.

Rexford has also endowed to help discover the need for assessment methodologies that identify well delimited areas where adverse health outcomes could be effectively and efficiently addressed by developing what has come to be termed Local Area Targeting and Analysis (LATA) concept. Reframing Community Health Related Issues.  LATA reframe the discussion of community health concerns by focusing on local concerns that are often overlooked by more global statistical approaches. Health information and analysis often emphasizes similarities across regions of like defined populations, whereas LATA will emphasize differences across regions of neighborhoods and communities.

  • Multilevel Analysis. LATA is intended to recognize that a multilevel spatial analysis of the social determinants of health are required to adequately understand how local relationships of adverse health outcomes relate to their community setting and how they can be misunderstood at the jurisdictional level.  Understanding infant mortality, for instance, a statewide or county level is a different analytical exercise that a neighborhood effects study at the Census Tract level.  LATA will require a multilevel methodology that allows the researcher to understand complexity in a new light.
  • Geospatial Research. LATA detection and assessment have been enabled by the advent of geographic information systems (GIS) and the development of geospatial statistical tools.  No longer is the simple display of data in tables, charts or on maps sufficient for understanding small areas; currently spatial data analysis can apply well tested clustering techniques to spatial data and use predictive models or apply local diffusion and mobility models to health care markets.
  • Models of Care.  LATA analysis can also be used to discern the effects of the absence or removal of necessary health care services from a targeted population.  The impact of Health system changes such as the (a) closure of a hospital based obstetrical services within rural areas, (b) the absence of stroke related services in rural areas, and (c) the limited availability of hospital psychiatric services can be addressed.  Such health service may be related to a distance/travel-time function which can be related to potential adverse health effects.

Epidemiology has always been aware of these contextual effects (e.g. the presence of asthma triggers in association with particular industrial sites).  But with the advent of geospatial analysis an increasing number of derivative spatial characteristics can be associated with adverse public health outcomes at the lowest levels of spatial aggregation, providing the opportunity for pin-point targeting of resources and personnel effort. In addition, ecological and aggregation related breakthrough through geospatial analysis have provided public health planners and directors additional types of analytical data.   

The LATA approach has been shaped by a number of considerations:

  1. (1) the increasing view that public health must take into consideration economic and environmental contexts to adequately understand adverse health and health care situations,
  2. (2) the increasing need for public health and economic development to cost-effectively address these adverse conditions with the pin-point accuracy allowed by the currently available spatially referenced data,
  3. (3) the ability to entertain new explanations for adverse conditions that may entail non-traditional causal explanations of these events,
  4. (4) the need to develop Impact Assessments for all policies that have the potential to adversely affect specific populations and lead to social and health inequities,
  5. (5) the need to informed resource allocation at a critical time as the nation continues to face cutbacks in public health financing,
  6. (6) the belief that public health responsibilities cannot wait until all the social and ecological determinants of adverse conditions are eliminated before they act,
  7. (7) the research model should inform public health action within a framework of LATA.

RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS

  • Spatial Modeling and Analysis
  • Crime Research & Analysis
  • Health Analysis, Modeling & Mapping
  • Environmental Research & Mapping

GIS & MAPPING

  • GIS Database Design & Development
  • GIS Inventory Surveys
  • Data Conversion  & Collection
  • Land Use Mapping
  • General Mapping Services

OTHER PROJECTS

  • Spatial analysis of Breast Cancer incidence in Virginia
  • Late-Stage Breast Cancer Diagnosis and Accessibility to Primary Care Physicians
  • Disparity in the risk of Infant Mortality among racial groups
  • A spatial-temporal Approach to Surveillance of Medicaid Asthma Hospitalization Disparities in Virginia
  • Location Analytics (Trade Area Analysis)