Methods to investigate spatial and temporal clustering in veterinary epidemiology.
Due to their contagious or point-source nature, ill-health and diseases often cluster in time and/or space. Overlooking this characteristic can lead to a delay in the control or eradication of the health problem. In addition to potentially expediting control efforts, cluster identification techniques enable the researcher or health-care official to identify and adjust for confounding factors and to generate new hypotheses regarding disease transmission. This paper examines a variety of temporal and spatial clustering techniques and focuses on those which have been reported recently in the veterinary literature.
Department of Medicine and Epidemiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. tecarpenter@ucdavis.edu
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D000820:Animal Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control; D000818:Animals; D016021:Epidemiologic Studies; D012107:Research Design; D014730:Veterinary Medicine / Q000379:methods*