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Abstract
People are increasingly relying on health information on the internet for health decision-making. One example of this is looking at reviews of providers or clinics before deciding whether to go to a provider. Compared to traditional metrics such as hospital surveys, a few advantages of using this non-traditional information is that it is user-generated, readily available, and stays instantaneously up to date. Also, some might view this data to be more trustworthy than government-produced data due to data integrity issues with government-produced data. This has especially been the case for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) in which it was revealed that there were some controversies with the production of its quality metrics on VA health facilities. The purpose of this research is to explore how patient reviews can be used in GIS applications of public health when it comes to women veterans accessibility in terms of validation, integration, and application of traditional and non-traditional data sources. In terms of validation, results show that there is some correlation between non-traditional data and traditional hospital quality metrics and that non-traditional data sources tends to have higher ratings per health facilities compared to traditional data sources. When non-traditional data is integrated in spatial accessibility modeling of women veterans to gender-specific care, results show that accessibility scores increase for areas farther away from the city center. Finally, using the Public Participation GIS and OPT-In frameworks, this data can be applied in GIS web and mobile apps in such a way which can increase women veterans accessibility to information about health and educational resources. This dissertation contributes to both Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIS&T) and public health for it seeks to give a better understanding how non-traditional data sources can be applied in various GIS applications for health accessibility not only from a spatial standpoint, but also from an information standpoint in terms of better understanding women veterans accessibility to health care.