Grant: Operating Grant

Finding patterns of disease is an important goal in population and public health. These patterns help the understanding of disease and this can lead to the development of new scientific hypotheses. For example, we may be able to further explore the causes of different diseases and improve disease control by identifying the characteristics that increase disease risk (e.g., pollution). The different patterns of disease may be because of distributions in geographical areas, workplaces, families, and other groupings. For years, researchers have shown how where a disease occurred could be linked to why the disease occurred. For example, in 1854 Dr. Snow examined the geographic pattern of epidemic cholera cases in London, England, and identified a contaminated public water pump as the source of the epidemic. Today, the use of statistical techniques to assess the impact of geography on disease is broadly defined as spatial statistics. Our proposal features the development of new statistical methods that will be used to monitor disease to find regions with high disease rates. The numbers need to be transformed into useful information (for example, summary conclusions) that can be used by policy makers, and valid statistical tools are essential. We will apply our methods to two sources of Alberta data: Emergency Department visits and childhood cancer cases. We believe that our new methods will be better than existing methods and that we will make new health discoveries. Our analyses will describe and identify trends over place and years of study. Like Dr. Snow, we believe our improved understanding of disease patterns will help us suggest potential causes for differences among different places. These possible causes can be explored to establish their importance. Such work benefits all individuals here and elsewhere, as new insights will be gained on the potential causes of disease, risks of disease can be reduced, and interventions can be targeted.