Today and tomorrow: Reflections on health and medical geography

Starter Kit for Geotagging and Geovisualization in Health Care: Resource Paper

BACKGROUND

Geotagging is the process of attaching geospatial tags to various media data types. In health care, the goal of geotagging is to gain a better understanding of health-related questions applied to populations. Although there has been a prevalence of geographic information in public health, in order to effectively use and expand geotagging across health care there is a requirement to understand other factors such as the disposition, standardization, data sources, technologies, and limitations.

OBJECTIVE

The objective of this document is to serve as a resource for new researchers in the field. This report aims to be comprehensive but easy for beginners to understand and adopt in practice. The optimal geocodes, their sources, and a rationale for use are suggested. Geotagging's issues and limitations are also discussed.

METHODS

A comprehensive review of technical instructions and articles was conducted to evaluate guidelines for geotagging, and online resources were curated to support the implementation of geotagging practices. Summary tables were developed to describe the available geotagging resources (free and for fee) that can be leveraged by researchers and quality improvement personnel to effectively perform geospatial analyses primarily targeting US health care.

RESULTS

This paper demonstrated steps to develop an initial geotagging and geovisualization project with clear structure and instructions. The geotagging resources were summarized. These resources are essential for geotagging health care projects. The discussion section provides better understanding of geotagging's limitations and suggests suitable way to approach it.

CONCLUSIONS

We explain how geotagging can be leveraged in health care and offer the necessary initial resources to obtain geocodes, adjustment data, and health-related measures. The resources outlined in this paper can support an individual and/or organization in initiating a geotagging health care project.

A life-course approach to early-onset of diabetes mellitus: Probable contribution of collective violence in Mexico

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a growing health problem among the pediatric population in the world, and particularly in Mexico. Official data in Mexico reported that during the period from 2003 to 2013 there was an increase in the cumulative incidence among older adolescents between 2010 and 2012, which decreased to the usual measures in 2013. All these variations occurred in a period in which collective violence permeated all levels of Mexican society. It can be argued that there might be a relationship between the two phenomena. This is an ecologic analytical study of trends over time comprising older adolescents (15-19 year olds). T2DM cumulative incidence and mortality rates attributable to violent death (VD) were standardized by direct method according to the World Health Organization. Data were sourced from nationwide official reports. Time series analysis was performed with ARIMA models and significant predictors. The disease ecology analysis was done using cluster analysis. Using significant predictors with ARIMA models, we found that the male VD mortality rates series could forecast 63.1% of the temporal variability of the cumulative incidence of T2DM series. Geographically, states with higher rates of violence also showed a higher incidence of T2DM. These data suggest that collective violence may make some contribution to the early onset of T2DM among adolescents, particularly in those regions most affected by violence. These findings can be conducive to opening new lines of research to explore the relationship between variables at the individual level and the clinical implications.

Practicing health geography in 2017 IMGS 2017 Editorial

This commentary is an introduction the special issue of Social Science and medicine composed of pieces of work presented at the International Medical Geography Symposium (IMGS) held in Angers, France in July 2017. Every two years, the symposium brings together health geographers and others interested in applying a spatial approach to their research to share findings and form new ideas about the progress of this exciting sub-discipline. 279 delegates from 30 countries attended this symposium hosted only for the second time outside the Anglo-Canadian-American triangle.