Amy Hillier

Legacy of Courage: W.E.B. Du Bois and The Philadelphia Negro

Amy Hillier — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:22:20 PDT

19-minute documentary filmed and edited by high school and college students as part of the Mapping Du Bois project available at www.vimeo.com/22239485

FED-UP with Childhood Obesity

Amy Hillier et al. — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:20:13 PDT

W.E.B. Du Bois and the Social Survey Movement

Amy Hillier — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 14:18:37 PDT

Invitation to Mapping: How GIS can Facilitate New Discovering in Urban and Planning History

Amy Hillier — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:54:17 PST

Manual for working with ArcGIS 10

Amy Hillier — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 17:22:20 PST

A Cross‐Sectional Prevalence Study of Ethnically‐Targeted and General Audience Outdoor

Amy Hillier — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:48:08 PDT

Yancey, A. Cole, B., Williams, J., Hillier, A., McCarthy, W., Akbar, J., Grier, S. and Backman, D. (2009) “A Cross‐Sectional Prevalence Study of Ethnically‐Targeted and General Audience Outdoor Weight‐Related Lifestyle Advertising.” Milbank Quarterly 87(1): 155-184.

Pennsylvania’s Fresh Food Financing Initiative

Amy Hillier — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:46:34 PDT

Giang, T., Karpyn A., Laurison, H. Hillier, A &Perry, D. (2008), Pennsylvania’s Fresh Food Financing Initiative. Journal of Public Health Management and Practice 14(3):272-279.

Clustering of Unhealthy Advertisements around Child-serving Institutions: A Three‐city

Amy Hillier — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 14:43:19 PDT

Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS are Changing Historical Scholarship

Amy Hillier — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 08:00:47 PDT

In the last decade, historical GIS has emerged as a promising new methodology for studying the past. Historical GIS is the use of geographic information systems software and allied geospatial methods for historical research and teaching. Placing History: How Maps, Spatial Data, and GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship offers case studies and essays on key issues involving historical GIS, highlighting the unprecedented range of tools to visualize historical information in a geographical context.

WEB Du Bois and the "Negro Problem": Thoughts on Violence in Philadelphia

Amy Hillier — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:55:23 PDT

This sermon, delivered at First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, might also be called "Why a white girl from New Hampshire is studying The Philadelphia Negro." This essay/sermon connects Du Bois's 1896 survey of Philadelphia to the violence currently plaguing Philadelphia.

Childhood Overweight and the Built Environment: Making Technology Part of the Solution Rather than Part of the Problem

Amy Hillier — Sun, 18 May 2008 12:20:41 PDT

The changing nature of how children engage with their physical environment is one factor in the dramatic increase in childhood overweight. Children today are engaging much less with the world outside their homes in terms of physical activity and much more in terms of eating. Technological innovations in media have contributed to these changes, keeping children inside and sedentary during more of their playtime and exposing them to highly coordinated advertising campaigns. But researchers are increasingly looking to technology for solutions to understand how children interact with their built environments and to make changes that promote healthy living. This article reviews many of these innovations, including the use of geospatial technologies, accelerometers, electronic food and travel diaries, and video games to promote physical activity and healthy eating. It also explores some of the other possibilities for harnessing the potential of technology to combat the childhood overweight epidemic.

ArcGIS 9.3 manual

Amy Hillier — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 18:11:02 PDT

Can Technology Be an Ally in the Fight against Childhood Obesity?

Amy Hillier — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:49:35 PDT

Historical Redlining in Philadelphia website

Amy Hillier — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:46:04 PDT

Mapping the Du Bois Philadelphia Negro website

Amy Hillier — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:44:57 PDT

Residential Security Maps and Neighborhood Appraisals. The Homeowners' Loan Corporation and the Case of Philadelphia

Amy E. Hillier — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:25:56 PDT

At the request of the Home Loan Bank Board, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) created color-coded maps for cities across the country between 1935 and 1940 that indicated risk levels for long-term real estate investment. Involvement in this City Survey Program marked a departure from the original mission of HOLC to provide new mortgages on an emergency basis to homeowners at risk of losing their homes during the Depression. This article considers why HOLC made these maps, how HOLC created them, and what the basis was for the grades on the maps. Geographic information systems and spatial regression models are used to show that racial composition was a significant predictor of map grades, controlling for housing characteristics.

Evaluating a Community Based Homelessness Prevention Program: A Geographic Information System Approach

Yin-Ling I. Wong et al. — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:25:54 PDT

This article introduces and illustrates the application of Geographic Information System technology to examine patterns of social-services use in community-based interventions. By integrating management information system data from human service agencies and publicly accessible data from the U.S. Census within a specially-referenced framework, the study illustrates that GIS analysis could help managers and planners of social services to assess the extent to which program implementation reflects adherence to a program concept and identify geographical areas with the greatest unmet service needs. The article demonstrates the application of GIS technology, based on an analysis of a city-wide community-based homelessness prevention program in Philadelphia.

Spatial Analysis of Historical Redlining: A Methodological Explanation

Amy E. Hillier — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:25:51 PDT

Despite widespread belief that redlining contributed to disinvestment in cities, there has been little empirical analysis of historical lending patterns. The lack of appropriate data and clear definitions of redlining has contributed to this void. This article reviews definitions and methods that have emerged from research on lending in recent years and considers how they can be applied to research on historical redlining. Address-level mortgage data from Philadelphia from the 1940s are analyzed using spatial regression, “hot spot” analysis, and surface interpolation.

Employing multiple definitions of redlining that focus on process and outcome, as well as spatial and statistical relationships in lending, the analyses result in a series of map layers that indicate where redlining may have occurred. In addition to providing some evidence of lending discrimination, this article promotes an explicitly spatial view of redlining that has conceptual and methodological implications for research on contemporary and historical redlining.

Community Activists and University Researchers Collaborating for Affordable Housing: Dual Perspectives on the Experience

Amy E. Hillier et al. — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:25:49 PDT

This paper describes and analyzes the successful collaboration between the Philadelphia Affordable Housing Coalition and the Cartographic Modeling Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania. This collaboration resulted in a research study that helped the Coalition secure an additional $10 million for affordable housing in Philadelphia. The perspectives of the activist and researcher on the collaboration are presented in their own voices and they describe their expectations, efforts to build relationships, define roles, and deal with different work styles and culture. Recommendations for building effective research partnerships are also provided.

Why Social Work Needs Mapping

Amy E. Hillier — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 17:25:47 PDT

Relative to other fields, social work has been slow to adopt geographic information systems (GIS) as a tool for research and practice. This paper argues that GIS can benefit social work by: (1) continuing and strengthening the social survey tradition; (2) providing a framework for understanding human behavior; (3) identifying community needs and assets; (4) improving the delivery of social services; and (5) empowering communities and traditionally disenfranchised groups. Examples from a social work course on GIS and published social work research help illustrate these points. The paper concludes by considering the ways that social work can contribute to the development of GIS.