Near the end of the 2019 fall semester, Sonya Gupta was a University of Illinois Chicago undergraduate conducting research on the location and extent of healthcare deserts in the Chicago area and the potential of mobile health clinics to bridge the gap … In the fall of 2020, biological sciences major Ryan Zomorrodi started research focused on Chicago area hospital closures and how they affected health access and outcomes. He also realized GIS would help the analysis, so he taught himself how to use it. They not only realized the key role GIS would have in their research, but they started to share ideas and tips on conducting GIS analyses. It led to a collaboration on a larger project investigating how to improve health infrastructure, including community health clinics and safety-net hospitals, within Chicago to help close the access gap in medical deserts. This work eventually led them to create a workshop series, then called Mapping Chicago, where they presented in classes, club meetings and conferences about using GIS software to better understand Chicago health disparities, create evidence-based solutions and improve health policy. Launched in 2022, their presentations also addressed structural violence, social and environmental factors of health, and data literacy through maps.
