Original articleScreening for Lead Poisoning: A Geospatial Approach to Determine Testing of Children in At-Risk Neighborhoods
Section snippets
Methods
This study focused on the city of Atlanta. To define neighborhood level categories of risk of lead exposure and to evaluate the extent of childhood blood lead testing in neighborhoods with varying levels of risk, the study integrated the following data: (1) childhood blood lead testing data, (2) residential land parcel data, (3) 2000 U.S. Census data within a geographic information system (GIS), and (4) neighborhood spatial data from the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.
Neighborhood Risk
The city of Atlanta has 236 neighborhoods (median area: 0.29 square miles; range: 0.02-4.36 square miles) containing 87 791 properties, of which 95.7% were residential. Of the residential properties, 75 286 (89.6%) were pre-1978 and 47 142 (56.1%) were pre-1950. The median number of housing units built before 1950 per neighborhood is 47 (range, 0-2124). The median number of housing units built before 1978 per neighborhood is 163 (range, 0-2480). There were 18 627 children aged ≤36 months living
Discussion
This neighborhood spatial approach provided smaller geographic areas to assign risk and assess testing in a city that has a high prevalence of risk factors for lead exposure. Categorizing risk for lead poisoning is important, both for clinicians to determine which child to test and for public health practitioners to assess the extent to which children at high risk are being tested—and being tested in compliance with testing guidelines and laws—and to target lead poisoning prevention resources.
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The authors declare no conflicts of interest, real or perceived. The findings and conclusions in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.