Infectious Disease: A Critical Dimension of Environmental Justice Mapping Tools

Abstract

Environmental justice mapping tools are an important resource for helping identify communities at risk for environmental injustice and helping to guide decision making for policymakers, researchers, and communities. They typically include indicators related to environmental risks (e.g., air quality), socioeconomic factors (e.g., demographic data), and physical health (e.g., disease morbidity and mortality). Recent reviews have found that only two existing tools incorporate indicators related to infectious disease, despite the intrinsic relationship between environmental conditions and infectious disease transmission. This article provides a comprehensive framework for incorporating infectious disease indicators into environmental justice screening and mapping tools. The framework for indicator selection includes four key dimensions: relevance to environmental justice, data quality and availability, spatial–temporal characteristics, and practical utility for decision making. Indicators can be categorized into three types: direct disease measures (e.g., morbidity and mortality), vulnerability indicators (e.g., vaccination rates), and environmental risk factors (e.g., vector habitats). Some of the challenges to incorporating infectious disease indicators include temporal variability (e.g., seasonality) and the availability of spatially meaningful direct measures that align with other indicators. However, methodological approaches could overcome these challenges—for example, incorporating dynamic disease surveillance data using rolling averages for endemic diseases. Integrating infectious disease indicators into environmental justice mapping tools is a complex challenge but a vital step in advancing environmental health equity.