The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #64502

Statice Wilmore, BS, Public Health Department, Tobacco Control Program, City of Pasadena Public Health Department, 1845 North Fair Oaks Avenue, Room 1131, Pasadena, CA 91103 and Joy Guihama, MPH, CHES, Health Promotion and Policy Department, Tobacco Control Program, City of Pasadena Public Health Department, 1845 Fair Oaks Ave., Pasadena, CA 91103, 626-744-6051, jguihama@ci.pasadena.ca.us.

The City of Pasadena Public Health Department’s Tobacco Control Program (TCP) has been in the process of developing a Geographic Information System (GIS), called Tobacco Sensitive Information Planning System (TSIPS) for the past 18 months funded through the Master Settlement Agreement from the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services, Tobacco Control Program. The goal of the TSIPS project is to develop a geographic community-level planning tool to identify, monitor, and prevent illegal tobacco sales to minors in Pasadena. TSIPS was designed to plan and evaluate identified tobacco control problems from a citywide and local neighborhood map perspective by providing a visual mapping tool to track illegal tobacco sales to minors taking into account: proximity to schools, geography, demographics, and the type of retailers most often in non-compliance. Overall, GIS has proven to be an integral part of supporting more effective local interventions and has been valuable in monitoring the effectiveness of state and local tobacco-related ordinances. The TCP program will demonstrate its TSIPS/GIS program using ARC VIEW 8.1 and IMAP software applications to track illegal tobacco sales to minors over the past seven years. In addition, presenters will identify additional uses of this system in supporting other tobacco control work, such as policy development initiatives, including licensing of tobacco retailers, conditional use permit zoning regulations, and outdoor tobacco smoke proposed policies.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the session, participants will:
• Learn how GIS can be used to track violators of tobacco control ordinances.
• List the ways that they can use GIS in their own tobacco control programs.
• Apply the methods presented in developing a monitoring system for their own jurisdictions.

Keywords: Tobacco Policy, Geographic Information Systems

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.