Maps, time trends and other graphic representations can provide useful tools for identifying and summarizing geographic and temporal trends in public health surveillance data. It is often difficult, however, to produce meaningful summaries of this type due to factors such as the instability of rate estimates for small spatial and/or temporal aggregations and the difficulty of teasing out potential trends in highly variable data. In addition, due to the availability of easy to use software, we often do not clearly identify the specific questions we are trying to evaluate prior to producing maps and graphs potentially resulting in using an approach that may not be best suited to the question at hand. In this presentation, I will review a series of simple exploratory tools for preliminary evaluations of geographically and temporally indexed public health surveillance data. In addition, I will discuss the importance of clearly specifying the spatial/temporal hypotheses of interest prior to producing these summaries in order to select an appropriate evaluation tool.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this presentation, participants will be familiar with: 1. A suite of easy to implement tools for use in exploring geographic and spatial trends in public health surveillance data. 2. Issues related to selection of the correct tool to address the spatial/temporal questions of interest.
Keywords: Geocoding, Geographic Information Systems
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.