OVERVIEW

This datalayer represents the six regions delineated by the commonwealth's Executive Office of Health and Human Services and used by the Department of Public Health for statistical, care coordination and administrative purposes. The regions - Western, Central, Northeast, Metro West, Boston and Southeast - are based on geographical groupings of cities and towns (see map at left). The 2 layers - polygon and arc - are stored in ArcSDE as REGEOHHS_POLY and REGEOHHS_ARC.

MassGIS received a list of town IDs and associated regions from staff at the Department of Public Health, Center for Health Information, Statistics, Research and Evaluation and joined it to the TOWNS layer. The layer was then dissolved by region to produce the six multi-part polygons in ArcMap. Population values were summed across each region and joined to the layer. Arcs were coded in coverage format in ArcInfo Workstation and converted to a geodatabase feature class.

The polygon attribute table contains the following items:
 

Item		Width/Type		Description
REG_NUM		1 / I		EOHHS Region Number (1-6)
REG_NAM		10 / C		EOHHS Region Name
POP1980		9 / I		1980 Population of region
POP1990		9 / I		1990 Population of region
POP2000		9 / I		2000 Population of region

The arc attribute table contains the following items:
 

Item		Width/Type		Description
OUTLINE		1 / I		Boundary type:  9 = EOHHS Region boundary  1 = State outline  4 = Coastline

The table REGEOHHS_POLY_TOWNS identifies which towns fall within each EOHHS region. Items include:
 

Item		Description
TOWN_ID		Municipality ID, from TOWNS layer
TOWN		Municipality name, from TOWNS layer
REG_NUM		EOHHS Region Number (1-6)
REG_NAM		EOHHS Region Name

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health will provide any updates to MassGIS.

Last Updated 2/2/2004
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