Advancing insights into methods for studying environment-health relationships: a multidisciplinary approach to understanding Legionnaires' disease.
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.
Dunn
Christine E
CE
Department of Geography, Durham University, South Road, Durham DH1 3LE, UK. C.E.Dunn@durham.ac.uk
Bhopal
Raj S
RS
Cockings
Samantha
S
Walker
David
D
Rowlingson
Barry
B
Diggle
Peter
P
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