Analysing geographically-related disease data

Abstract

This issue of Statistical Methods in Medical Research is devoted to four papers that show how we may identify and model the geographical factors that not only shape disease distributions in time and space but also, in the case of transmissible diseases, affect the spread of disease from one geographical area to another. The purpose of this editorial introduction is to outline some of the problems that arise when studying geographical distributions of disease, and so provide a general framework within which the various specialist papers may be placed.