Abstract

Disease Mapping of Tuberculosis Data in Iran using Mixture Models

Kazemnejad Anooshirvan
Associate Professor, Biostatistics Department,
Tarbiat Modarres University, Iran
aklili@yahoo.com

Akhoond Mohammad Reza
Postgraduate Student, Biostatistics Department,
Tarbiat Modarres University, Iran
akhoond.mr@gmail.com

Amiri Reza
Postgraduate Student, GIS and Remote Sensing Department,
Tarbiat Modarres University, Iran
amiri.reza@gmail.com

Abstract :
Environmental justice and equity are emerging concepts in development of environmental health policy. These concepts are related to questions on the spatial distribution of environmental contaminants in the population leading to the potential occurrence of certain diseases in different parts of the population. Diseases mapping can be define as a method for displaying the spatial distribution of disease occurrence (or exposure occurrence) on a map.
Maps displaying the geographical distribution of mortality or disease incidence have several important functions; for example, they are used by epidemiologists to identify factors, which may be linked to various causes of mortality or may be used by policy makers for the purpose of allocation of health funding.
In the later case, it is usually of interest not only to obtain smoothed picture of diseases incidence across the region being studied, but also to pinpoint areas which manifest extreme risks.
The aim of this study is to present some traditional methods of constructing such a map and describe an alternative approach using mixture models to identify population heterogeneity and map construction. Then, the mixture models was used to map tuberculosis data in Iran between 2001 and 2003 in order to cluster and identify the regions which have high risk of this disease. Such identification is important because policy makers may wish to target regions associated with such extreme risks for financial assistance while epidemiologist may wish to target such regions for further study.