Where are the Maps in Neighborhood Health Research?

There is a scarcity of maps and spatial analysis in neighborhood health research. The purpose of this study is to identify how maps are being used in the literature on neighborhood health and to identify authors’ motivation for, and barriers to, using and sharing maps. For this purpose, this study reviewed 233 articles on neighborhood health published between 2000 and 2020, and conducted a survey of the authors of the reviewed articles. Results showed that, of the articles reviewed, only 27% contained maps. Temporal analyses of the articles by journal type revealed that the proportion of maps in the literature steadily increased over time for both health science and social science journals. Survey results revealed that, even though maps were not often appearing within the literature, the majority of investigators (63%) created maps or used mapping software during their investigation. Reasons for not publishing maps included data privacy regulations, time constraints, and journal restrictions. While results from our review of the literature confirmed that there is a scarcity of maps in the neighborhood health literature, our survey revealed that most investigators are using mapping in some way, shape, or form. Thus, spatial data visualization is being utilized by neighborhood health researchers, but the extent to which these visualizations are valued is less clear. Given the importance of spatial data visualization in facilitating understanding and generating hypotheses, future research into the use of and attitudes towards maps and spatial data in neighborhood health is warranted.