Articles

Using meta-quality to assess the utility of volunteered geographic information for science

Volunteered geographic information (VGI) has strong potential to be increasingly valuable to scientists in collaboration with non-scientists. The abundance of mobile phones and other wireless forms of communic...

Authors: Shaun A. Langley, Joseph P. Messina and Nathan Moore

Urban–rural inequalities in suicide mortality: a comparison of urbanicity indicators

Urban–rural disparities in suicide mortality have received considerable attention. Varying conceptualizations of urbanity may contribute to the conflicting findings. This ecological study on Germany assessed h...

Authors: M. Helbich, V. Blüml, T. de Jong, P. L. Plener, M.-P. Kwan and N. D. Kapusta

Mapping child maltreatment risk: a 12-year spatio-temporal analysis of neighborhood influences

‘Place’ matters in understanding prevalence variations and inequalities in child maltreatment risk. However, most studies examining ecological variations in child maltreatment risk fail to take into account th...

Authors: Enrique Gracia, Antonio López-Quílez, Miriam Marco and Marisol Lila

Gardening in the desert: a spatial optimization approach to locating gardens in rapidly expanding urban environments

Food access is a global issue, and for this reason, a wealth of studies are dedicated to understanding the location of food deserts and the benefits of urban gardens. However, few studies have linked these two...

Authors: Elizabeth A. Mack, Daoqin Tong and Kevin Credit

A generic method for improving the spatial interoperability of medical and ecological databases

The availability of big data in healthcare and the intensive development of data reuse and georeferencing have opened up perspectives for health spatial analysis. However, fine-scale spatial studies of ecologi...

Authors: A. Ghenassia, J. B. Beuscart, G. Ficheur, F. Occelli, E. Babykina, E. Chazard and M. Genin

Small-area distribution of multiple sclerosis incidence in western France: in search of environmental triggers

Despite intensive research over several decades, the etiology of multiple sclerosis (MS) remains poorly understood, although environmental factors are supposedly implicated. Our goal was to identify spatial cl...

Authors: Karima Hammas, Jacqueline Yaouanq, Morgane Lannes, Gilles Edan and Jean-François Viel

Univariate and multivariate spatial models of health facility utilisation for childhood fevers in an area on the coast of Kenya

Precise quantification of health service utilisation is important for the estimation of disease burden and allocation of health resources. Current approaches to mapping health facility utilisation rely on spat...

Authors: Paul O. Ouma, Nathan O. Agutu, Robert W. Snow and Abdisalan M. Noor

Does exposure to the food environment differ by socioeconomic position? Comparing area-based and person-centred metrics in the Fenland Study, UK

Retail food environments (foodscapes) are a recognised determinant of eating behaviours and may contribute to inequalities in diet. However, findings from studies measuring socioeconomic inequality in the food...

Authors: Eva R. Maguire, Thomas Burgoine, Tarra L. Penney, Nita G. Forouhi and Pablo Monsivais

The approaches to measuring the potential spatial access to urban health services revisited: distance types and aggregation-error issues

The potential spatial access to urban health services is an important issue in health geography, spatial epidemiology and public health. Computing geographical accessibility measures for residential areas (e.g...

Authors: Philippe Apparicio, Jérémy Gelb, Anne-Sophie Dubé, Simon Kingham, Lise Gauvin and Éric Robitaille

Relative risk estimation of dengue disease at small spatial scale

Dengue is a high incidence arboviral disease in tropical countries around the world. Colombia is an endemic country due to the favourable environmental conditions for vector survival and spread. Dengue surveil...

Authors: Daniel Adyro Martínez-Bello, Antonio López-Quílez and Alexander Torres Prieto

Mobility assessment of a rural population in the Netherlands using GPS measurements

The home address is a common spatial proxy for exposure assessment in epidemiological studies but mobility may introduce exposure misclassification. Mobility can be assessed using self-reports or objectively m...

Authors: Gijs Klous, Lidwien A. M. Smit, Floor Borlée, Roel A. Coutinho, Mirjam E. E. Kretzschmar, Dick J. J. Heederik and Anke Huss

Transforming geographic scale: a comparison of combined population and areal weighting to other interpolation methods

Transforming spatial data from one scale to another is a challenge in geographic analysis. As part of a larger, primary study to determine a possible association between travel barriers to pediatric cancer fac...

Authors: Elaine Hallisey, Eric Tai, Andrew Berens, Grete Wilt, Lucy Peipins, Brian Lewis, Shannon Graham, Barry Flanagan and Natasha Buchanan Lunsford

Ecological niche modeling to determine potential niche of Vaccinia virus: a case only study

Emerging and understudied pathogens often lack information that most commonly used analytical tools require, such as negative controls or baseline data; thus, new analytical strategies are needed to analyze tr...

Authors: Claire A. Quiner and Yoshinori Nakazawa

Online versus in-person comparison of Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes (MAPS) assessments: reliability of alternate methods

An online version of the Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes (Abbreviated) tool was adapted to virtually audit built environment features supportive of physical activity. The current study assessed int...

Authors: Christine B. Phillips, Jessa K. Engelberg, Carrie M. Geremia, Wenfei Zhu, Jonathan M. Kurka, Kelli L. Cain, James F. Sallis, Terry L. Conway and Marc A. Adams

Spatial variability of excess mortality during prolonged dust events in a high-density city: a time-stratified spatial regression approach

Dust events have long been recognized to be associated with a higher mortality risk. However, no study has investigated how prolonged dust events affect the spatial variability of mortality across districts in...

Authors: Man Sing Wong, Hung Chak Ho, Lin Yang, Wenzhong Shi, Jinxin Yang and Ta-Chien Chan

GridSample: an R package to generate household survey primary sampling units (PSUs) from gridded population data

Household survey data are collected by governments, international organizations, and companies to prioritize policies and allocate billions of dollars. Surveys are typically selected from recent census data; h...

Authors: Dana R. Thomson, Forrest R. Stevens, Nick W. Ruktanonchai, Andrew J. Tatem and Marcia C. Castro

Is gentrification all bad? Positive association between gentrification and individual’s perceived neighborhood collective efficacy in Montreal, Canada

Collective efficacy has been associated with many health benefits at the neighborhood level. Therefore, understanding why some communities have greater collective efficacy than others is important from a publi...

Authors: Madeleine Steinmetz-Wood, Rania Wasfi, George Parker, Lisa Bornstein, Jean Caron and Yan Kestens

Estimating the prevalence of 26 health-related indicators at neighbourhood level in the Netherlands using structured additive regression

Local policy makers increasingly need information on health-related indicators at smaller geographic levels like districts or neighbourhoods. Although more large data sources have become available, direct esti...

Authors: Jan van de Kassteele, Laurens Zwakhals, Oscar Breugelmans, Caroline Ameling and Carolien van den Brink

Developing a data-driven spatial approach to assessment of neighbourhood influences on the spatial distribution of myocardial infarction

There is a growing understanding of the role played by ‘neighbourhood’ in influencing health status. Various neighbourhood characteristics—such as socioeconomic environment, availability of amenities, and soc...

Authors: Wahida Kihal-Talantikite, Christiane Weber, Gaelle Pedrono, Claire Segala, Dominique Arveiler, Clive E. Sabel, Séverine Deguen and Denis Bard

Intersection of neighborhood dynamics and socioeconomic status in small-area walkability: the Heart Healthy Hoods project

Previous studies found a complex relationship between area-level socioeconomic status (SES) and walkability. These studies did not include neighborhood dynamics. Our aim was to study the association between ar...

Authors: Pedro Gullón, Usama Bilal, Alba Cebrecos, Hannah M. Badland, Iñaki Galán and Manuel Franco

Systematic literature review of reproductive outcome associated with residential proximity to polluted sites

This study aims to assess the evidence on adverse pregnancy outcome associated with living close to polluted industrial sites, and identify the strengths and weaknesses of published epidemiological studies. A...

Authors: Wahida Kihal-Talantikite, Denis Zmirou-Navier, Cindy Padilla and Séverine Deguen

Visualizing statistical significance of disease clusters using cartograms

Health officials and epidemiological researchers often use maps of disease rates to identify potential disease clusters. Because these maps exaggerate the prominence of low-density districts and hide potential...

Authors: Barry J. Kronenfeld and David W. S. Wong

Contextual influences affecting patterns of overweight and obesity among university students: a 50 universities population-based study in China

Many studies have examined childhood and adolescent obesity, but few have examined young adults and the effect of their home and current living environments on prevalence rates. The present study explores cont...

Authors: Tingzhong Yang, Lingwei Yu, Ross Barnett, Shuhan Jiang, Sihui Peng, Yafeng Fan and Lu Li

Erratum to: Influence of Pokémon Go on physical activity levels of university players: a cross-sectional study

Authors: Fiona Y. Wong

Characterisation of the natural environment: quantitative indicators across Europe

The World Health Organization recognises the importance of natural environments for human health. Evidence for natural environment-health associations comes largely from single countries or regions, with varie...

Authors: Graham Smith, Marta Cirach, Wim Swart, Audrius Dėdelė, Christopher Gidlow, Elise van Kempen, Hanneke Kruize, Regina Gražulevičienė and Mark J. Nieuwenhuijsen

Optimising spatial accessibility to inform rationalisation of specialist health services

In an era of budget constraints for healthcare services, strategies for provision of services that improve quality whilst saving costs are highly valued. A proposed means to achieve this is consolidation of se...

Authors: Catherine M. Smith, Hannah Fry, Charlotte Anderson, Helen Maguire and Andrew C. Hayward

Development of a spatial sampling protocol using GIS to measure health disparities in Bobo-Dioulasso, Burkina Faso, a medium-sized African city

Many cities in developing countries experience an unplanned and rapid growth. Several studies have shown that the irregular urbanization and equipment of cities produce different health risks and uneven exposu...

Authors: Daouda Kassié, Anna Roudot, Nadine Dessay, Jean-Luc Piermay, Gérard Salem and Florence Fournet

Interactive, open source, travel time scenario modelling: tools to facilitate participation in health service access analysis

Modelling travel time to services has become a common public health tool for planning service provision but the usefulness of these analyses is constrained by the availability of accurate input data and limita...

Authors: Rohan Fisher and Jonatan Lassa

The relationship between ethnic composition of the residential environment and self-reported health among Turks and Moroccans in Amsterdam

Previous studies from the US and UK suggest that neighbourhood ethnic composition is associated with health, positive or negative, depending on the health outcome and ethnic group. We examined the association ...

Authors: Eleonore M. Veldhuizen, Umar Z. Ikram, Sjoerd de Vos and Anton E. Kunst

A modification to geographically weighted regression

Geographically weighted regression (GWR) is a modelling technique designed to deal with spatial non-stationarity, e.g., the mean values vary by locations. It has been widely used as a visualization tool to exp...

Authors: Yin-Yee Leong and Jack C. Yue

The role of the built environment in explaining educational inequalities in walking and cycling among adults in the Netherlands

This study examined whether characteristics of the residential built environment (i.e. population density, level of mixed land use, connectivity, accessibility of facilities, accessibility of green) contribute...

Authors: Daniël C. van Wijk, Joost Oude Groeniger, Frank J. van Lenthe and Carlijn B. M. Kamphuis

Where do people purchase food? A novel approach to investigating food purchasing locations

Studies exploring associations between food environments and food purchasing behaviours have been limited by the absence of data on where food purchases occur. Determining where food purchases occur relative t...

Authors: Lukar E. Thornton, David A. Crawford, Karen E. Lamb and Kylie Ball

Influence of Pokémon Go on physical activity levels of university players: a cross-sectional study

The prevalence of overweight is increasing and the effectiveness of various weight management and exercise programs varied. An augmented reality smartphone game, Pokémon Go, appears to increase activity levels...

Authors: Fiona Y. Wong

From urban planning and emergency training to Pokémon Go: applications of virtual reality GIS (VRGIS) and augmented reality GIS (ARGIS) in personal, public and environmental health

The latest generation of virtual and mixed reality hardware has rekindled interest in virtual reality GIS (VRGIS) and augmented reality GIS (ARGIS) applications in health, and opened up new and exciting opport...

Authors: Maged N. Kamel Boulos, Zhihan Lu, Paul Guerrero, Charlene Jennett and Anthony Steed

A direct observation method for auditing large urban centers using stratified sampling, mobile GIS technology and virtual environments

With the expansion and growth of research on neighbourhood characteristics, there is an increased need for direct observational field audits. Herein, we introduce a novel direct observational audit method and ...

Authors: Sean J. V. Lafontaine, M. Sawada and Elizabeth Kristjansson

Spatial identification of potential health hazards: a systematic areal search approach

Large metropolitan areas often exhibit multiple morbidity hotspots. However, the identification of specific health hazards, associated with the observed morbidity patterns, is not always straightforward. In th...

Authors: Alina Svechkina, Marina Zusman, Natalya Rybnikova and Boris A. Portnov

International comparison of observation-specific spatial buffers: maximizing the ability to estimate physical activity

Advancements in geographic information systems over the past two decades have increased the specificity by which an individual’s neighborhood environment may be spatially defined for physical activity and heal...

Authors: Lawrence D. Frank, Eric H. Fox, Jared M. Ulmer, James E. Chapman, Suzanne E. Kershaw, James F. Sallis, Terry L. Conway, Ester Cerin, Kelli L. Cain, Marc A. Adams, Graham R. Smith, Erica Hinckson, Suzanne Mavoa, Lars B. Christiansen, Adriano Akira F. Hino, Adalberto A. S. Lopes…

Ovarian cancer: density equalizing mapping of the global research architecture

Despite its impact on female health worldwide, no efforts have been made to depict the global architecture of ovarian cancer research and to understand the trends in the related literature. Hence, it was the o...

Authors: Dörthe Brüggmann, Katharina Pulch, Doris Klingelhöfer, Celeste Leigh Pearce and David A. Groneberg

Identifying youth-friendly service practices associated with adolescents’ use of reproductive healthcare services in post-conflict Burundi: a cross-sectional study

Very little is known about reproductive health service (RHS) availability and adolescents’ use of these services in post-conflict settings. Such information is crucial for targeted community interventions that...

Authors: Imelda K. Moise, Jaclyn F. Verity and Joseph Kangmennaang

Seasonal variation in geographical access to maternal health services in regions of southern Mozambique

Geographic proximity to health facilities is a known determinant of access to maternal care. Methods of quantifying geographical access to care have largely ignored the impact of precipitation and flooding. Fu...

Authors: Prestige Tatenda Makanga, Nadine Schuurman, Charfudin Sacoor, Helena Edith Boene, Faustino Vilanculo, Marianne Vidler, Laura Magee, Peter von Dadelszen, Esperança Sevene, Khátia Munguambe and Tabassum Firoz

Confidence intervals for rate ratios between geographic units

Ratios of age-adjusted rates between a set of geographic units and the overall area are of interest to the general public and to policy stakeholders. These ratios are correlated due to two reasons—the first be...

Authors: Li Zhu, Linda W. Pickle and James B. Pearson Jr.

Online platform for applying space–time scan statistics for prospectively detecting emerging hot spots of dengue fever

Cases of dengue fever have increased in areas of Southeast Asia in recent years. Taiwan hit a record-high 42,856 cases in 2015, with the majority in southern Tainan and Kaohsiung Cities. Leveraging spatial sta...

Authors: Chien-Chou Chen, Yung-Chu Teng, Bo-Cheng Lin, I-Chun Fan and Ta-Chien Chan

Residential area characteristics and disabilities among Dutch community-dwelling older adults

Living longer independently may be facilitated by an attractive and safe residential area, which stimulates physical activity. We studied the association between area characteristics and disabilities and wheth...

Authors: Astrid Etman, Carlijn B. M. Kamphuis, Frank H. Pierik, Alex Burdorf and Frank J. Van Lenthe

Using an audit tool (MAPS Global) to assess the characteristics of the physical environment related to walking for transport in youth: reliability of Belgian data

The aim was to examine inter-rater and alternate-form reliability of the Microscale Audit of Pedestrian Streetscapes (MAPS) Global tool to assess the physical environment along likely walking routes in Belgium.

Authors: Griet Vanwolleghem, Ariane Ghekiere, Greet Cardon, Ilse De Bourdeaudhuij, Sara D’Haese, Carrie M. Geremia, Matthieu Lenoir, James F. Sallis, Hannah Verhoeven and Delfien Van Dyck

Using expert decision-making to establish indicators of urban friendliness for walking environments: a multidisciplinary assessment

Numerous studies have suggested that friendly walking environments positively affect physical activity and health. Creating friendly walking environments in urban areas is a complex and wide-ranging topic, and...

Authors: Yen-Cheng Chiang and Han-Yu Lei

Determining the spatial heterogeneity underlying racial and ethnic differences in timely mammography screening

The leading cause of cancer death for women worldwide continues to be breast cancer. Early detection through timely mammography has been recognized to increase the probability of survival. While mammography ra...

Authors: Joseph Gibbons and Melody K. Schiaffino

Do the risk factors for type 2 diabetes mellitus vary by location? A spatial analysis of health insurance claims in Northeastern Germany using kernel density estimation and geographically weighted regression

The provision of general practitioners (GPs) in Germany still relies mainly on the ratio of inhabitants to GPs at relatively large scales and barely accounts for an increased prevalence of chronic diseases amo...

Authors: Boris Kauhl, Jürgen Schweikart, Thomas Krafft, Andrea Keste and Marita Moskwyn

Optimal health and disease management using spatial uncertainty: a geographic characterization of emergent artemisinin-resistant Plasmodium falciparum distributions in Southeast Asia

Artemisinin-resistant Plasmodium falciparum malaria parasites are now present across much of mainland Southeast Asia, where ongoing surveys are measuring and mapping their spatial distribution. These efforts requ...

Authors: Eric P. M. Grist, Jennifer A. Flegg, Georgina Humphreys, Ignacio Suay Mas, Tim J. C. Anderson, Elizabeth A. Ashley, Nicholas P. J. Day, Mehul Dhorda, Arjen M. Dondorp, M. Abul Faiz, Peter W. Gething, Tran T. Hien, Tin M. Hlaing, Mallika Imwong, Jean-Marie Kindermans, Richard J. Maude…

smokeSALUD: exploring the effect of demographic change on the smoking prevalence at municipality level in Austria

Reducing the smoking population is still high on the policy agenda, as smoking leads to many preventable diseases, such as lung cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and more. In Austria, data on smoking prevalence...

Authors: Melanie Tomintz, Bernhard Kosar and Graham Clarke

Characterizing physical activity and food urban environments: a GIS-based multicomponent proposal

Healthier urban environments influence the distribution of cardiovascular risk factors. Our aim was to design and implement a multicomponent method based on Geographic Information Systems to characterize and e...

Authors: Alba Cebrecos, Julia Díez, Pedro Gullón, Usama Bilal, Manuel Franco and Francisco Escobar