The Dutch National Atlas 
of Public Health and 
Health Care
Marit de Vries
1 Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 2015
Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 20152
Introduction
Mapping public health and health care in VZinfo.nl
   VZinfo.nl               From data to maps       Succeses and challenges 
Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 20153
What? 
Information about health care and 
public health in the Netherlands
For whom?
policy makers, professionals and 
researchers 
How?
Online website 
www.volksgezondheidenzorg.info
4From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
● Large variation in data resources
● Our data is the result of different ways of data collection 
- Registrations
- Questionnaires
● Obtaining the data
Remote access, CBS Statline, individual files , contracts
Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 2015
Structuring 
Mainly in relational databases (MS Access)
- Checking and matching regional data
- Standardisation (controling for age and sex)
- Statistical significance
- Distance / Travel time modelling
- Calculating average over multiple years
GIS serves as link between data table and map. 
Sometimes GIS is used for spatial analysis
Visualisation
Mainly in ArcGIS and Adobe Illustrator
Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 20155
From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
6 Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 2015
From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 20157
From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
Objectives and functions of our maps
1. Describing regional patterns
2. Comparing patterns / maps
3. Evaluating 
4. Discovering problems
Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 20158
From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
Describing regional patterns
9 Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 2015
From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
Describing regional patterns: levels of scale
10 Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 2015
From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
Describing regional patterns: levels of scale
11 Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 2015
Comparing patterns / maps
From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
12 Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 2015
From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
Comparing patterns / maps
13 Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 2015
From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
Evaluation
Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 201514
From data to maps
   Collecting | Structuring & Visualisation | Presentation
Discovering problems
Successes
- Large amount of maps
- Interactivity
- Knowledge integration with other parts of our website (explanations, 
data and info on prevention, costs, …)
- Maps and data are publicly available
Challenges
- In data structuring: lacking geocoding, changing boundaries, names 
and codes of regions
- In data collection: Actuality, availability of data over time and on 
regional levels, dependency on third parties
- Regional perspective, not the whole story (Municipal Health profiles)
Mapping public health and health care | October 19, 201515
Successes and challenges