The role of spatially varying loadings in dynamic spatial factor models for modeling the opioid syndemic.

ABSTRACT: Understanding the interactions and spatio-temporal variations of public health outcomes is crucial for gaining insight into interrelated epidemics across different locations and time periods. Dynamic spatial factor models provide a flexible framework for capturing shared variability among multiple outcomes through a latent factor and its corresponding loadings. A common assumption in these models is that factor loadings are spatially constant, implying uniform relationships between outcomes across the study region. However, this assumption may overlook important regional differences in how outcomes relate to the underlying latent factor. In this study, we derive the covariance structure of the outcome vector to highlight how spatially varying versus constant loadings influence the overall

SUBMITTER: Murphy E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12490277 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature