A Stabilized Kriging Method for Mapping Disease Rates.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Mapping disease rates is an important aspect of epidemiological research because it helps inform public health policy. Disease maps are often drawn according to local administrative areas (LAAs), such as counties, cities, or towns. In LAAs with small populations, disease rates are unstable and are prone to appear extremely high or low. The empirical Bayes methods consider variance differences among different LAAs, thereby stabilizing the disease rates. The methods of kriging break the constraints of geopolitical boundaries and produce a smooth curved surface in the form of contour lines, but the methods lack the stabilizing effect of the empirical Bayes methods.

Methods

An easy-to-implement stabilized kriging method is proposed to map disease rates, which allows d

SUBMITTER: Hsu CC 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9939925 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature