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.
Carpenter
T E
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Department of Medicine and Epidemiology, School of Veterinary Medicine, University of California, Davis, CA 95616, USA. tecarpenter@ucdavis.edu
D000820:Animal Diseases / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000517:prevention & control; D000818:Animals; D016021:Epidemiologic Studies; D012107:Research Design; D014730:Veterinary Medicine / Q000379:methods*