GIS approaches to the problem of disease clusters: a brief commentary

Tom Koch and Ken Denike

Social Science & Medicine, 2001, vol. 52, issue 11, 1751-1754

Abstract: This commentary considers issues raised in a recent article on GIS-based approaches to modeling disease clusters. 'Modeling exposure opportunities' (Sabel, Gatrell & Löytönen et al., 2000. Social Science and Medicine, 50, 1121-37) and the general problem of mapping disease clusters. It notes that the authors' advocate a fundamentally statistical approach, Kerneling estimation, to map the occurrence of a specific illness whose etiology is unknown. Epidemiologists, ironically, have advocated a fundamentally cartographic solution, the cartogram, in addressing the general problem of disease clusters. The advantages and limits of both approaches are reviewed and the potential for their comparison in a single study suggested. Most importantly, perhaps, the commentary seeks to join the epidemiological and medical geographic literatures as they pertain to this analytic problem and medical cartography's potential (GIS-based or traditional) to understand disease etiology.

Keywords: Cartography; Disease; clusters; Epidemiology; GIS (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
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