scholarly journals Evaluating the Geographical Accessibility and Equity of COVID-19 Vaccination Sites in England

Vaccines ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Catherine Duffy ◽  
Andy Newing ◽  
Joanna Górska

We assess the geographical accessibility of COVID-19 vaccination sites—including mass vaccination centers and community-level provision—in England utilizing open data from NHS England and detailed routing data from HERE Technologies. We aim to uncover inequity in vaccination site accessibility, highlighting small-area inequality hidden by coverage figures released by the NHS. Vaccination site accessibility measures are constructed at a neighborhood level using indicators of journey time by private and public transport. We identify inequity in vaccination-site accessibility at the neighborhood level, driven by region of residence, mode of transport (specifically availability of private transport), rural-urban geography and the availability of GP-led services. We find little evidence that accessibility to COVID-19 vaccination sites is related to underlying area-based deprivation. We highlight the importance of GP-led provision in maintaining access to vaccination services at a local level and reflect on this in the context of phase 3 of the COVID-19 vaccination programme (booster jabs) and other mass vaccination programmes.

Author(s):  
T. Kliment ◽  
V. Cetl ◽  
H. Tomič ◽  
J. Lisiak ◽  
M. Kliment

Nowadays, the availability of authoritative geospatial features of various data themes is becoming wider on global, regional and national levels. The reason is existence of legislative frameworks for public sector information and related spatial data infrastructure implementations, emergence of support for initiatives as open data, big data ensuring that online geospatial information are made available to digital single market, entrepreneurs and public bodies on both national and local level. However, the availability of authoritative reference spatial data linking the geographic representation of the properties and their owners are still missing in an appropriate quantity and quality level, even though this data represent fundamental input for local governments regarding the register of buildings used for property tax calculations, identification of illegal buildings, etc. We propose a methodology to improve this situation by applying the principles of participatory GIS and VGI used to collect observations, update authoritative datasets and verify the newly developed datasets of areas of buildings used to calculate property tax rates issued to their owners. The case study was performed within the district of the City of Požega in eastern Croatia in the summer 2015 and resulted in a total number of 16072 updated and newly identified objects made available online for quality verification by citizens using open source geospatial technologies.


2017 ◽  
Vol 49 (9) ◽  
pp. 2046-2064 ◽  
Author(s):  
N Henry ◽  
J Pollard ◽  
P Sissons ◽  
J Ferreira ◽  
M Coombes

In 2013, the UK Government announced that seven of the nation’s largest banks had agreed to publish their lending data at the local level across Great Britain. The release of such area based lending data has been welcomed by advocacy groups and policy makers keen to better understand and remedy geographies of financial exclusion. This paper makes three contributions to debates about financial exclusion. First, it provides the first exploratory spatial analysis of the personal lending data made available; it scrutinises the parameters and robustness of the dataset and evaluates the extent to which the data increase transparency in UK personal lending markets. Second, it uses the data to provide a geographical overview of patterns of personal lending across Great Britain. Third, it uses this analysis to revisit the analytical and political limitations of ‘open data’ in addressing the relationship between access to finance and economic marginalisation. Although a binary policy imaginary of ‘inclusion-exclusion’ has historically driven advocacy for data disclosure, recent literatures on financial exclusion generate the need for more complex and variegated understandings of economic marginalisation. The paper questions the relationship between transparency and data disclosure, the policy push for financial inclusion, and patterns of indebtedness and economic marginalisation in a world where ‘fringe finance’ has become mainstream. Drawing on these literatures, this analysis suggests that data disclosure, and the transparency it affords, is a necessary but not sufficient tool in understanding the distributional implications of variegated access to credit.


2015 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann-Sofie Hellberg ◽  
Karin Hedström

Purpose – The aim of this paper is to describe a local government effort to realise an open government agenda. This is done using a storytelling approach. Design/methodology/approach – The empirical data are based on a case study. The authors participated in, as well as followed, the process of realising an open government agenda on a local level, where citizens were invited to use open public data as the basis for developing apps and external Web solutions. Based on an interpretative tradition, they chose storytelling as a way to scrutinise the competition process. In this paper, they present a story about the competition process using the story elements put forward by Kendall and Kendall (2012). Findings – The research builds on existing research by proposing the myth that the “public” wants to make use of open data. The authors provide empirical insights into the challenge of gaining benefits from open public data. In particular, they illustrate the difficulties in getting citizens interested in using open public data. Their case shows that people seem to like the idea of open public data, but do not necessarily participate actively in the data reuse process. Research limitations/implications – The results are based on one empirical study. Further research is, therefore, needed. The authors would especially welcome more studies that focus on citizens’ interest and willingness to reuse open public data. Practical implications – This study illustrates the difficulties of promoting the reuse of open public data. Public organisations that want to pursue an open government agenda can use these findings as empirical insights. Originality/value – This paper answers the call for more empirical studies on public open data. Furthermore, it problematises the “myth” of public interest in the reuse of open public data.


Author(s):  
Khalid Saleh Aloufi

<span>Open data are available from various private and public institutions in different resource formats. There are already great number of open data that are published using open data portals, where datasets and resources are mainly presented in tabular or sheet formats. However, such formats have some barriers with application developments and web standards. One of the web recommenced standards for semantic web application is RDF. There are various research efforts have been focused on presenting open data in RDF formats. However, no framework has transformed tabular open data into RDFs considering the HTML tags and properties of the resources and datasets. Therefore, a methodology is required to generate RDF resources from this type of open data resources. This methodology applies data transformations of open data from a tabular format to RDF files for the Saudi Open Data Portal. The methodology successfully transforms open data resources in sheet format into RDF resources. Recommendations and future work are given to enhance the development of building open data.</span>


2017 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ljuan Marko Gashi ◽  
Zeljko Pozega ◽  
Boris Crnkovic

Abstract This study of cultures across 6 countries (7 regions) shows that each region has its own specificity and its own unique employee value profile. Value profiles have been explored as a potential diagnostic tool on the basis of Hofstede’s value dimensions in the service of human resource development at the local level. The resulting employee value profiles are based on a representative sample of employees in the private and public sectors. Significant similarity in value profiles have been found for employees from Croatia and Serbia compared to Romania, Hungary, Slovenia and Italy, both in the public and private sector. The research results suggest the direction that managers and policymakers need to take in order to understand what employees’ values are, how they can be used, and how to address the challenges of human resource development in their region.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felana Angella Ihantamalala ◽  
Vincent Herbreteau ◽  
Christophe Révillion ◽  
Mauricianot Randriamihaja ◽  
Jérémy Commins ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundGeographical accessibility to health facilities remains one of the main barriers to access care in rural areas of the developing world. Although methods and tools exist to model geographic accessibility, the lack of basic geographic information prevents their widespread use at the local level for targeted program implementation. The aim of this study was to develop very precise, context-specific estimates of geographic accessibility to care in a rural district of Madagascar to help with the design and implementation of interventions that improve access for remote populations.MethodsWe used a participatory approach to map all the paths, residential areas, buildings and rice fields on OpenStreetMap (OSM). We estimated shortest route from every household in the District to the nearest primary health care center (PHC) and community health site (CHS) with the Open Source Routing Machine (OSMR) tool. Then, we used remote sensing methods to obtain a high resolution land cover map, a digital elevation model and rainfall data to model travel speed. Travel speed models were calibrated with field data obtained by GPS tracking in a sample of 168 walking routes. Model results were used to predict travel time to seek care at PHCs and CHSs for all the shortest route estimated earlier. Finally, we integrated geographical accessibility results into an e-health platform developed with R Shiny.ResultsWe mapped over 100,000 buildings, 23,000 km of footpaths, and 4,925 residential areas throughout Ifanadiana district; this data is freely available on OSM. We found that over three quarters of the population lived more than one hour away from a PHC, and 10-15% lived more than one hour away from a CHS. Moreover, we identified areas in the North and East of the district where the nearest PHC was further than 5 hours away, and vulnerable populations across the district with poor geographical access (>1 hour) to both PHCs and CHSs.ConclusionOur study demonstrates how to improve geographical accessibility modeling so that results can be context-specific and operationally actionable by local health actors. The importance of such approaches is paramount for achieving universal health coverage in rural areas throughout world.


2019 ◽  
Vol 134 (2) ◽  
pp. 118-125 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Conis

The modern era of vaccination was heralded with the licensure of the first 2 measles vaccines in 1963. This new era was distinct from the preceding era of vaccination for 4 main reasons. First, federal leadership in support of immunization at the local level grew. Second, immunization proponents championed the required vaccination of children as the best means of ensuring a protected population. Third, immunization proponents championed the idea that mass vaccination would not only help manage infectious diseases but also eradicate them. Fourth, the focus of local and federally supported immunization initiatives began to extend to the “mild” and “moderate” diseases of childhood (eg, measles), so-called because they were seen as less severe than previous targets of mass vaccination, such as smallpox, polio, and diphtheria. This article follows the history of measles to explore immunization successes and challenges in this modern era, because measles was the first of the mild and moderate diseases to become the target of a federally supported eradication-through-vaccination campaign, one that relied heavily on the preemptive, required vaccination of children. Its story thus epitomizes the range of political, epidemiological, cultural, and communications challenges to mass immunization in the modern era of vaccination.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Puja Shakya ◽  
Binod Prasad Parajuli

&lt;p&gt;Nepal is highly vulnerable to multiple disasters due to its topography and geographic conditions. It also suffers with data deficiency in better understanding the impacts of disasters and existing capacities to cope with such disasters. This information scarcity severely hinders understanding the disasters and their associated risks in the areas. This also hampers local and regional risk reduction, preparedness and response, limiting rigorous and robust disaster risk modelling and assessment. For regions facing recurrent disaster, there is a strong need of more integrated and proactive perspective into the management of disaster risks and innovations. Recent advances on digital and spatial technologies, citizen science and open data are introducing opportunities through prompt data collection, analysis and visualization of locally relevant spatial data. These data could be used as evidence in local development planning as well as linking in different services of the areas. This will be helpful for sustained investment in disaster risk management and resilience building. In current federal structure of Nepal, there is an acute data deficiency at the local level (municipalities and wards) in terms of data about situation analysis, demographics, and statistics, disaster impacts (hazard, exposure and vulnerability) etc. This has caused hindrances to all the relevant stakeholders including government, non-government and donors in diagnosing the available resources, capacities for effective planning and managing disaster risks. In this context, we are piloting an approach to fulfil existing data gaps by mobilizing citizen science through the use of open data sources in Western Nepal. We have already tested it through trainings to the local authorities and the communities in using open data for data collection. Likewise, in one of our upcoming project on data innovations, we shall create a repository of available open data sources; develop analytical tools for risk assessment which will be able to provide climate related services. Later, upon testing the tools, these can be implemented at the local level for informed decision making.&lt;/p&gt;


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