MassHEIS - Massachusetts Health and Environment Information System

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Public health students still learn the landmark story of how John Snow mapped the London homes hit by the 1854 cholera epidemic against the locations of drinking water wells and saw that affected families clustered near a particular water supply. Based on this observation, the city shut off the well and ended the epidemic.

The Silent Spring Institute Health and Environmental Information System (HEIS) translates Snow’s insight into twenty-first century computer mapping technology to look for relationships between environmental pollutants and disease with the goal of finding clues to prevention. Mapping also helps identify areas where health or environmental problems are most significant and assesses environmental injustice -- the uneven distribution of environmental burdens.

The Health and Environment Information System will enable policymakers, researchers, and the public to map health and environmental information about communities in Massachusetts. Users will be able to select from pre-made maps or create their own, print and save maps for future use, query the data, or follow personalized links to the Institute’s original research or external health and environment websites. Carefully researched links to scientific and news sources like PubMed and MedlinePlus provide up-to-the-minute information to contextualize the maps -- for example, information on health effects of certain chemicals, pollution sources in the user’s area, or listings of the latest scientific studies in a specified topic area. For technical users, HEIS will provide access to download or interactively access the geographic information systems (GIS) data and its related metadata via ArcIMS web services. One of the first publicly available sites of its kind, the tool represents an important step in increasing access to essential health and environmental information, as well as sharing the Institute’s own groundbreaking research.
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