Routledge Spatial Analysis in Health Geography (Geographies of Health Series)

Presenting current research on spatial epidemiology, this book covers topics such as exposure, chronic disease, infectious disease, accessibility to health care settings and new methods in Geographical Information Science and Systems. For epidemiologists, and for the management and administration of health care settings, it is critical to understand the spatial dynamics of disease. For instance, it is crucial that hospital administrators develop an understanding of the flow of patients over time, especially during an outbreak of a particular disease, so they can plan for appropriate levels of staffing and to carry out adaptive prevention measures. Furthermore, understanding where and why a disease occurs at a certain geographic location is vital for decision makers to formulate policy to increase the accessibility to health services (either by prevention, or adding new facilities). Spatial epidemiology relies increasingly on new methodologies, such as clustering algorithms, visualization and space-time modelling, the domain of Geographic Information Science. Implementation of those techniques appears at an increasing pace in commercial Geographic Information Systems, alongside more traditional techniques that are already part of such systems. This book provides the latest methods in GI Science and their use in health related problems. Review ’Kanaroglou, Delmelle and Páez have provided us with a collection of contributions that represent the forefront of the field of spatial analysis and health. The list of contributors is impressive, and they do an excellent job at bringing the reader up-to-date. This is a much-needed book in an important and rapidly growing field.’ Peter Rogerson, University at Buffalo, USA ’This is a truly impressive volume that covers a wide range of topics in medical geography and spatial epidemiology. The chapters provide lucid discussion on important conceptual and methodological issues pertinent to the study of health and disease. This is an excellent book for students and researchers to learn about the latest spatial modeling and analytical methods for examining the space-time patterns of various health-related problems (e.g., space-time visualization techniques, exposure analysis, spatial optimization models, disease clustering, and accessibility analysis).’ Mei-Po Kwan, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, USA About the Author Pavlos Kanaroglou is Professor in the Department of Geography and Earth Science at McMaster University, Canada. Eric Delmelle is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences at UNC Charlotte, USA. Antonio Páez is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Earth Science at McMaster University, Canada.