Exploring Climate‐Disease Connections in Geopolitical Versus Ecological Regions: The Case of West Nile Virus in the United States

• Published in: Geohealth 2024-06, Vol.8 (6), p.e2024GH001024-n/a
• Main Authors: Moser, S. Kane, Spencer, Julie A., Barnard, Martha, Hyman, James M., Manore, Carrie A., Gorris, Morgan E.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: 60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES; climate; Data collection; Disease control; Disease prevention; Disease transmission; Ecology; ecoregions; Ecosystems; Environmental protection; General or Miscellaneous; Geohealth; Geopolitics; health data; Impacts of Climate Change: Human Health; Infectious diseases; Land area; Mosquitoes; Precipitation; Public Health; Regions; Temperature; Vector Born Diseases; Vector-borne diseases; West Nile virus
• ISSN: 2471-1403; 2471-1403
• DOI: 10.1029/2024GH001024

Many infectious disease forecasting models in the United States (US) are built with data partitioned into geopolitical regions centered on human activity as opposed to regions defined by natural ecosystems; although useful for data collection and intervention, this has the potential to mask biological relationships between the environment and disease. We explored this concept by analyzing the correlations between climate and West Nile virus (WNV) case data aggregated to geopolitical and ecological regions. We compared correlations between minimum, maximum, and mean annual temperature; precipitation; and annual WNV neuroinvasive disease (WNND) case data from 2005 to 2019 when partitioned into (a) climate regions defined by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and (b) Level I ecoregions defined by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). We found that correlations between climate and WNND in NOAA climate regions and EPA ecoregions were often contradictory in both direction and magnitude, with EPA ecoregions more often supporting previously established biological hypotheses and environmental dynamics underlying vector‐borne disease transmission. Using ecological regions to examine the relationships between climate and disease cases can enhance the predictive power of forecasts at various scales, motivating a conceptual shift in large‐scale analyses from geopolitical frameworks to more ecologically meaningful regions. Plain Language Summary In the United States (US), geopolitical subdivisions like states and counties are the governing regions that collect public health data and implement health interventions like risk messaging, mask mandates, or spraying chemicals for mosquito control. These subdivisions were mostly decided by politics and other human activity, not similarities in ecosystems and climate. This can make it difficult to understand how climate affects illnesses like mosquito‐borne disease since mosquitoes will live within specific ecosystems and aren't confined to geopolitical boundaries as health data are. We explored this idea by analyzing the relationships between temperature, precipitation, and the mosquito‐borne pathogen called West Nile virus (WNV) from 2005 to 2019. We grouped our data using two different regional boundaries: (a) climate regions from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), primarily based on state boundaries, and (b) ecoregions from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), base