Using Participatory Mapping to Diagnose Upstream Determinants of Health and Prescribe Downstream Policy-Based Interventions.

Participatory mapping is a powerful methodology for working with community residents to examine social and environmental determinants of public health disparities. However, this empowering methodology has only been applied sparingly in public health research and practice, with limited examples in the literature. To address this literature gap, we 1) review participatory mapping approaches that may be applied to exploring place-based factors that affect community health, and 2) present a mixed-methods participatory geographic information systems (PGIS) examination of neighborhood assets (eg, streetlights) and challenges (eg, spaces of crime and violence) related to access to public parks in South Los Angeles, California.