Earth Materials and Health Research Priorities for Earth Science and Public Health (2007) / Chapter Skim
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Section III: Facilitating Collaborative Research: Mechanisms and Priorities, 7: GIScience, Remote Sensing, and Epidemiology: Essential Tools for Collaboration
Section III: Facilitating Collaborative Research: Mechanisms and Priorities, 7: GIScience, Remote Sensing, and Epidemiology: Essential Tools for Collaboration
Pages 113-126
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Section III Facilitating Collaborative Research: Mechanisms and Priorities
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From page 115... ...
The tools and methods that facilitate analysis include conventional epidemiology, with its subspecialties of genetic, occupational, and environmental epidemiology, as well as remote sensing, Geographic Information Science (GIScience1 ) , and the broad field of geospatial analysis that includes spatial statistics and spatial modeling.
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From page 116... ...
. GISs that use data from remote sensing instruments such as aerial photographs and satellite images have become indispensable tools in the development of causal models linking environmental factors and both infectious and noninfectious disease.
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Remote sensing, coupled with GIS, has been used widely to describe the environmental conditions associated with disease and to model the occurrence of disease, particularly infectious diseases that are sensitive to environmental conditions such as vectorborne and waterborne diseases. Data Layers Data layers are a basic element of GIS.
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118 EARTH MATERIALS AND HEALTH BOX 7.1 GIS Data Layers and Diarrheal Disease in Nigeria Diarrheal diseases are a major cause of mortality and morbidity in de veloping countries. The spatial distribution of severe diarrhea can be pre dicted, in part, as a function of the spatial distributions of geological fea tures, population density, and environmental pollution (see Figure 7.1)
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In addition, causal modeling could be added to this list. TYPES AND AVAILABILITY OF EPIDEMIOLOGICAL DATA Research at the interface of public health and the earth sciences is only as good as the data used to integrate the two.
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One solution may involve the definition of a new data block of sufficiently small geographic size to be able to associate disease with geological phenomena while providing a sufficiently large error ring around an individual's residence. Federal Health Datasets Federal agencies are increasingly using GISs at the interface of the earth sciences and public health.
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, the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System,5 the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys6 (NHANES I, II, etc.) , and the National Ambulatory Care Survey.7 In general, these datasets are available with very poor spatial resolution, although under certain stringent conditions these data may be provided by the NCHS Research Data Center at the county level or, occasionally, the individual level.
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122 EARTH MATERIALS AND HEALTH BOX 7.2 Availability of Cancer Data for Spatial Epidemiology There are a number of problems associated with attempts to establish causality between environmental exposure and cancer data. The National Cancer Atlas includes only mortality data, rather than incidence data, and these data are available only over long time periods and at large units of aggregation.
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. Although staff members at individual cancer registries and some researchers may -- under very restrictive conditions -- be able to gain access to spatially more specific locations of patient residences, such access is highly variable and depends on study protocols and Institutional Review Board10 (IRB)
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It is crucial that such a system include geographically referenced health data. OPPORTUNITIES FOR RESEARCH COLLABORATION Both infectious and noninfectious diseases vary geographically at scales ranging from very local to global.
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125 GISCIENCE, REMOTE SENSING, AND EPIDEMIOLOGY BOX 7.3 Data Access and Spatial Analysis of Environmental Contamination, Kolding Town, Denmark Poulstrup and Hansen (2004) used GIS and exposure assessment to in vestigate the spatial relationship between malignant cancer incidence and exposure to airborne dioxin (Figure 7.2)
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Data made available by federal, state, and county agencies should be geocoded and geographically referenced to this scale. Legitimate concerns over confidentiality could be further addressed by restricting the release of data to investigators operating under the oversight of Institutional Review Boards.
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