Letter to the Editor
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2022. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Diabetes. Jul 15, 2022; 13(7): 584-586
Published online Jul 15, 2022. doi: 10.4239/wjd.v13.i7.584
Epidemiology for public health practice: The application of spatial epidemiology
Longjian Liu, Garvita Nagar, Ousmane Diarra, Stephanie Shosanya, Geeta Sharma, David Afesumeh, Akshatha Krishna
Longjian Liu, Garvita Nagar, Ousmane Diarra, Stephanie Shosanya, Geeta Sharma, David Afesumeh, Akshatha Krishna, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States
Author contributions: Liu L drafted the Letter; Nagar G, Diarra O, Shosanya S, Sharma G, Afesumeh D, and Krishna A critically reviewed the Letter.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflict of interest to disclose.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article that was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: https://creativecommons.org/Licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Corresponding author: Longjian Liu, MD, MSc, PhD, Doctor, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, Drexel University Dornsife School of Public Health, 3215 Market ST, Philadelphia, PA 19104, United States. ll85@drexel.edu
Received: February 12, 2022
Peer-review started: February 12, 2022
First decision: April 17, 2022
Revised: May 5, 2022
Accepted: June 22, 2022
Article in press: June 22, 2022
Published online: July 15, 2022
Abstract

Spatial epidemiology is the description and analysis of geographic patterns and variations in disease risk factors, morbidity and mortality with respect to their distributions associated with demographic, socioeconomic, environmental, health behavior, and genetic risk factors, and time-varying changes. In the Letter to Editor, we had a brief description of the practice for the mortality and the space-time patterns of John Snow's map of cholera epidemic in London, United Kingdom in 1854. This map is one of the earliest public heath practices of developing and applying spatial epidemiology. In the early history, spatial epidemiology was predominantly applied in infectious disease and risk factor studies. However, since the recent decades, noncommunicable diseases have become the leading cause of death in both developing and developed countries, spatial epidemiology has been used in the study of noncommunicable disease. In the Letter, we addressed two examples that applied spatial epidemiology to cluster and identify stroke belt and diabetes belt across the states and counties in the United States. Similar to any other epidemiological study design and analysis approaches, spatial epidemiology has its limitations. We should keep in mind when applying spatial epidemiology in research and in public health practice.

Keywords: Diabetes mellitus, Spatial epidemiology, Diabetes belt, Public health practice

Core Tip: This is a Letter to the Editor on the article published in World Journal of Diabetes 2021; 12: 1042, entitled: Spatial epidemiology of diabetes: Methods and Insights. Spatial epidemiology is a new sub-field of epidemiology. We read with great interest this paper, and would like to further address the application of spatial epidemiology for public health practice.