A pilot study using geospatial analysis to identify hot-spot of populations utilizing services at university based counseling centers.

Our pilot study tests whether university counseling centers (UCC) can apply the concept of cluster analysis, and geospatial analysis to identify clusters of "hot spots". Study participants were university students who received services from a large mid-western UCC between August 2015 and July 2016. The study was approved by the University's Institutional Review Board (IRB). Data collected include demographics, address, educational level and declared major. Data analysis, conducted using SYSTAT 13.1, IBM SPSS Statistics, ArcGIS Desktop and 10.2, ArcOnline, Microsoft excel to clean and analyze demographic data. Analysis included optimized cluster analysis with a -value < 0.05 as statistically significant. 927 participants, average age was 21.6. We identified "hotspots" using cluster analysis based on age, address, and country of origin. Our study shows that UCCs can apply cluster analysis, and geospatial analysis to identify clusters of "hot spots" to target risk populations.