Five Essential Properties of Disease Maps

We argue that as the disease map user group grows, disease maps must prioritize several essential properties that support public health uses of disease maps. We identify and describe five important properties of disease maps that will produce maps appropriate for public health purposes: (1) Control...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annals of the Association of American Geographers 2012-09, Vol.102 (5), p.1067-1075
Main Authors: Beyer, Kirsten M. M., Tiwari, Chetan, Rushton, Gerard
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
análisis espacial
Benefits
Cancer
cartografía de la enfermedad
cáncer
disease mapping
Disease models
Disease risk
Diseases
Epidemiology
Essential properties
Geography
Health policy
Human geography
Intervention
Mortality
Pickles
Population
Property
Public health
Spatial analysis
Spatial Analysis and Modeling of Disease
疾病制图
癌症
空间分析
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Summary:We argue that as the disease map user group grows, disease maps must prioritize several essential properties that support public health uses of disease maps. We identify and describe five important properties of disease maps that will produce maps appropriate for public health purposes: (1) Control the population basis of spatial support for estimating rates, (2) display rates continuously through space, (3) provide maximum geographic detail across the map, (4) consider directly and indirectly age-sex-adjusted rates, and (5) visualize rates within a relevant place context. We present an approach to realize these properties and illustrate it with small-area data from a population-based cancer registry. Users whose interests are in selecting areas for interventions to improve the health of local populations will find maps with these five properties useful. We discuss benefits and limitations of our approach, as well as future logical extensions of this work.
ISSN:0004-5608
2469-4452
1467-8306
2469-4460
DOI:10.1080/00045608.2012.659940