Abstract
Population and institution-based data sources have traditionally been the source of data for measuring national development plans including the sustainable development goals. There is an ever increasing need to improve the assessment of the health of people and the social determinants of health, especially as it relates to where people live by national statistical offices (NSOs). Knowledge from these investigations help in understanding diseases, planning for interventions and mitigating the impact of various health risks. NSOs are having difficulty meeting the data needs for the measurement of various health and development interventions including the sustainable development goals. Non-traditional data sources may hold the key in addressing the shortcomings of currently known methods but are still not well embedded in data generation processes by NSOs in low-income and middle-income countries, especially Africa. The non-traditional/emerging data sources include citizen science/crowdsourced data, search engine queries, social media data, mobile phone records and data from sensors. These non-traditional data sources can redefine the measurement of health and development interventions in Africa and require additional attention by stakeholders.
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Abbreviations
- CDR:
-
Call detail records
- CSD:
-
Citizen science data
- LMICs:
-
Low-income and middle-income countries
- NSOs:
-
National Statistics Offices
- SDGs:
-
Sustainable development goals
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Makinde, O.A. (2023). Traditional and Non-traditional Data Sources Useful in Research in African Health and Medical Geography. In: Adewoyin, Y. (eds) Health and Medical Geography in Africa. Global Perspectives on Health Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-41268-4_4
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