Increasingly, epidemiologists and medical geographers are turning to Geographic Information Systems as it proves vital to the understanding and investigation of the spatial explanation of cancer. The visualization of a correlation of variations in different societies and environmental patterns with the spread of cancer stands to increase not only health awareness and education, but also major policy reforms in human development. Furthermore, GIS, by displaying the geographic spread and history of a cancer, can be utilized to predict the spread of future cancers or even infectious diseases. In a time where the spread of Swine flu has become of international concern as its path and origin is unknown and unpredictable, the wealth of resources that GIS offers must be realized and utilized by world health organizations.
The power of maps to display such a high extent of quantitative data should not be underutilized. One does not need to speak or read English in order to understand the intention and data in this project as maps speak an international language; the colors and size allow for communication of values and thoughts without a shared spoken language. Because of this, health organizations, dealing with international diseases, cancers, and epidemics, should not overlook this powerful tool.
For this project I studied the various ways that skin cancer, leukemia, and “all cancer,” could be visualized. The unit of cancer data is represented via cancer mortality rate or CMR = (Cancer Deaths/Population) x 100,000. Data was acquired from said institution but was limited as I was only provided with two agglomerate values; cancer data for the years 1950-1969 are represented in this project as “1970” and data from 1970 to 1994 is labeled as “1994.” The geographical unit is a state economic area, defined as “either single counties or groups of contiguous counties within the same state that had similar economic characteristics when they were originally defined, just prior to the 1950 census (IPUMSUsa. “SEA” Minnesota Population Center. http://usa.ipums.org/usa-action/variableDescription.do?mnemonic=SEA).” My hope is to prove and further support the beneficial utilization of GIS in mapping the spatial diffusion of diseases and cancer in predicting their future paths and/or understand their historical spread and relation with the land.