Harnessing Big Data for Public Health and Social Science Research

Speaker: Quynh Nguyen, University of Maryland

Dr. Quynh Nguyen will cover two big data sources that can be leveraged to understand built and social neighborhood environments. Advances in neighborhood research have been constrained by the lack of neighborhood data for many geographical areas. We utilize millions of Google Street View images across the United States and leverage convolutional neural networks to automatically label each image. We implemented regression models to estimate associations between built environments and health outcomes. Additionally, interpersonal and structural racial bias are leading explanations for the continuing racial disparities in birth outcomes but research to confirm the role of racism has been hampered by challenges in both measuring racial bias and evaluating its impact. We use Twitter data to characterize area-level racial hostility and examine the associations with adverse birth and cardiovascular outcomes. Use of nontraditional data sources like Twitter has the potential to lead to greater tracking of area-level racial bias and to provide essential information needed to develop interventions to reduce the impact of racial bias on health.

This talk is part of the 2021 ICPSR Summer Program's Blalock Lecture Series.