GIS and Evidence-Based Policy Making - Chapter 8

The need to identify patterns of illness and disease is not uncommonin public health, for example the identification of disease clusters and tendencies toward clustering, such as outbreaks of communicable disease (e.g., tuberculosis), and higher than expected prevalence=incidence of diseases (e.g., childhood leukemia). The basic building blocks or units for such patterns may be individuals or geographical units, but the key factor is the association between units in terms of time, space, or other complex links. However, searching for patterns of disease using geographical-based data can help not only to identify disease clusters in a geographical area but also can be helpful in seeking to identify potential causes of...