Overview

A map released by the Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service at the University of Virgina has been making the rounds online because of the sobering reality in shows. This reality is that in many cities, most starkly Chicago, the grouping of people by race are sharply distinctive, hinting that segregation is still very much alive.

I decided to take this map a step further and plot trauma centers (both adult and child, all levels) that are verified by the American College of Surgeons. In Chicago, you can see that heavily Hispanic and African-American areas are devoid of adult trauma centers. This is an interesting phenomenon to study over the rest of the United States. Hopefully further research will continue to explore this.

The data was drawn from the American College of Surgeons (here), parsed, and then rendered using Google Maps API on top of the original Cooper Center map. Additional information from the Illinois Department of Public Health was used as well (here).

Chicago Area Map: