Spatial Concentration of Mortality for the Five Leading Causes of Death in the United States, 2004--2006

• Activity Number: 257
• Type: Contributed
• Date/Time: Monday, August 2, 2010 : 2:00 PM to 3:50 PM
• Sponsor: Section on Statistics in Epidemiology
• Author(s): Jay H. Kim*+ and Joe Fred Gonzalez, Jr.
• Companies: CDC/NCHS and National Center for Health Statistics
• Keywords: Cluster Analysis ; Spatial Statistics ; Geostatistics ; Hot/Cold Spots

Abstract

Using 2004-2006 mortality records, age-adjusted death rates (AADR) have been calculated for the five leading causes of death. This is the first attempt to map the AADR by county after the mapping by health service areas (HSA) (1). A goal of the current investigation is to observe what the effect of the use of smaller geographic unit would be on the county maps, clusters and hot and cold spots using the same methods as those used previously for HSAs: AADR, Moran's I and Getis-Ord Gi. Comparisons of the current results for counties with the earlier results for HSAs indicate that the county maps make better distinction in delineating hot and cold spots.