title: Advancing insights into methods for studying environment-health relationships: a multidisciplinary approach to understanding Legionnaires' disease.
abstract: Recent years have witnessed important advances in the analysis of spatially referenced health data. This paper uses GIS and point pattern modelling to address previously unanswered questions regarding the spatial epidemiology of Legionnaires' disease. We demonstrate a distance effect for proximity of residence to cooling towers; mixed support for a directional effect; and some evidence relating to multiple sources. In uncovering complex conceptual and technical problems in the spatial modelling of infection risk we also extended the limits of existing point pattern techniques. We advocate further multidisciplinary research to advance methodological developments for understanding spatial environment-health relationships.
authors.affiliation: Department of Geography, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK. C.E.Dunn@durham.ac.uk
authors.forename: Christine E
authors.initials: CE
authors.lastname: Dunn
authors.forename: Raj S
authors.initials: RS
authors.lastname: Bhopal
authors.forename: Samantha
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Cockings
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Walker
authors.forename: Barry
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Rowlingson
authors.forename: Peter
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Diggle
mesh_terms: D000389:Air Conditioning / Q000009:adverse effects / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D016000:Cluster Analysis; D004782:Environmental Health; D040362:Geographic Information Systems; D006798:Housing / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D007877:Legionnaires' Disease / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000635:transmission; D040442:Public Health Informatics; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012307:Risk Factors; D012606:Scotland / Q000453:epidemiology; D019371:Topography, Medical