Worldmapper draws attention to the world's health inequalities

When it comes to the inequality in people's health across the globe, says Professor Danny Dorling of the University of Sheffield, "you can say it, you can prove it, you can tabulate it, but it is only when you show it that it hits home." This is the philosophy behind Worldmapper, a collection of cartograms that rescale the size of territories in proportion to the value being mapped. The project aims to create new world maps in explanatory posters, and provide raw data and technical notes on many of the most prominent available world major datasets. "What I think matters most," says Professor Dorling, "are the new ways of thinking that we foster as we redraw the images of the human anatomy of our planet in these ways. What do we need to be able to see—so that we can act."

The Worldmapper project is a collaboration between researchers at the Social and Spatial Inequalities Research Group of the University of Sheffield and Mark Newman from the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan in the United States.

Source: The Open-Access Journal PLoS MEDICINE