Abstract
The history and development of public health was motivated, illustrated, and implemented with the use of maps. In this chapter, we provide a brief review of the use of maps and related concepts in public health spanning from medieval plague quarantine plans to remotely sensed satellite measures of air pollution. We begin with early maps of infectious disease (e.g., plague, yellow fever, and cholera) including an in-depth review of Dr. John Snow’s famed map of the 1854 London cholera epidemic. We also review the role of mapping in contemporary political debates regarding miasma versus contagion as underlying causes of disease and associated early public health responses such as sanitation and quarantine. We next highlight atlases of disease identifying, documenting, labeling, and mapping endemic areas of known diseases (e.g., yellow fever, cholera, and leprosy) across the globe . Finally, we outline the rise of quantification of observed patterns and the use of spatial statistical techniques to investigate epidemiologic hypotheses regarding geographic variations in disease risk and associations with potential local explanatory factors. Taken together, we find a rich history of mapping in the development, maturation, and modern implementation of public health science and practice.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Banerjee, S., Carlin, B. P., & Gelfand, A. E. (2014). Hierarchical modeling and analysis for spatial data (2nd ed.). Boca Raton: Chapman & Hall/CRC Press.
Barrett, F. A. (2000). Finke’s 1792 map of human diseases: The first world disease map? Social Science and Medicine, 50, 915–921.
Bartlett, M. S. (1964). The spectral analysis of two-dimensional point processes. Biometrika, 51, 299–311.
Besag, J., York, J., & Mollié, A. (1991). Bayesian image restoration, with two applications in spatial statistics (with discussion). Annals of the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, 43, 1–59.
Brody, F., Rip, M. R., Vinten-Johansen, P., Paneth, N., & Rachman, S. (2000). Map-making and myth-making in Broad Street: The London cholera epidemic, 1854. Lancet, 356, 64–68.
Brömer, R. (2000). The first global map of the distribution of human diseases: Friedrich Schnurrer’s 1827 ‘Charte über die geographische Ausbreitung der Krankheiten’. Medical History, 44(20), 176–185.
Camerini, J. R. (2000). Heinrich Berghaus’s map of human diseases. Medical History, 44(20), 186–208.
Camus, A. (1948). The plague. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Clayton, D. G., & Kaldor, J. (1987). Empirical Bayes estimates of age-standardized relative risks for use in disease mapping. Biometrics, 43, 671–682.
Cressie, N. A. C. (1993). Statistics for spatial data (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Fotheringham, A. S., Brunsdon, C., & Charlton, M. (2002). Geographically weighted regression: The analysis of spatially varying relationships. Chichester: Wiley.
Garfield, S. (2013). On the map: A mind-expanding exploration of the way the world looks. New York: Gotham Books. Chapter 13.
Gelfand, A. E., Kim, H. J., Sirmans, C. F., & Banerjee, S. (2003). Spatial modeling with spatially varying coefficient processes. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 98(462), 387–396.
Gruenewald, P. J., Freisthler, B., Remer, L., LaScala, E. A., & Treno, A. (2006). Ecological models of alcohol outlets and violent assaults: Crime potentials and geospatial analysis. Addiction, 101(5), 666–677.
Howe, G. M. (Ed.). (1977). A world geography of human diseases. London: Academic Press.
IOM (Institute of Medicine). (2012a). Geographic adjustment in medicare payment: Phase I: Improving accuracy. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
IOM (Institute of Medicine). (2012b). Geographic adjustment in medicare payment: Phase II: Implications for access, quality, and efficiency. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.
Johnson, S. (2006). The ghost map. New York: Riverhead Books.
Kitron, U. (2000). Risk maps: Transmission and burden of vector-borne diseases. Parasitology Today, 16(8), 324–325.
Koch, T. (2005). Cartographies of disease: Maps, mapping, and medicine. Redlands: ESRI Press.
Lawson, A. B. (2008). Statistical methods for spatial epidemiology (2nd ed.). New York: Wiley.
Miller, G. (1962). “Airs, waters, and places” in history. Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 17(1), 129–140.
Parkes, E. A. (1855). Review: Mode of communication of cholera by John Snow. British and Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, 15, 458.
Snow, J. (1855). On the mode of communication of cholera (2nd ed.). London: John Churchill.
Stevenson, L. G. (1965). Putting disease on the map: The early use of spot maps in the study of Yellow Fever. Journal of the History of Medicine, 20, 226–261.
Waller, L. A. (2014). Putting spatial statistics (back) on the map. Spatial Statistics, 9, 4–19.
Waller, L. A., & Gotway, C. A. (2004). Applied spatial statistics for public health data. Hoboken: Wiley.
Waller, L. A., Zhu, L., Gotway, C. A., Gorman, D. M., & Gruenewald, P. J. (2007). Quantifying geographic variations in associations between alcohol distribution and violence: A comparison of geographically weighted regression and spatially varying coefficient models. Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment, 21, 573–588.
Walter, S. D. (2000). Disease mapping: A historical perspective. In P. Elliott, J. C. Wakefield, N. Best, & D. J. Briggs (Eds.), Spatial epidemiology: Methods and applications (pp. 223–239). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Walter, S. D., & Birnie, S. E. (1991). Mapping mortality and morbidity patterns: An international comparison. International Journal of Epidemiology, 20, 678–689.
Wennberg, J. E., & Cooper, M. M. (Eds.). (1998). The Dartmouth Atlas of health care 1996. Chicago: American Hospital Association.
Wennberg, J., & Gittelsohn, A. (1973). Small area variations in health care delivery: A population-based health information system can guide planning and regulatory decision-making. Science, 182, 1102–1108.
Wurman, R. S. (2006). Access London (10th ed.). New York: Harper Collins.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Waller, L.A. (2017). Mapping in Public Health. In: Brunn, S., Dodge, M. (eds) Mapping Across Academia. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1011-2_9
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1011-2_9
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-024-1009-9
Online ISBN: 978-94-024-1011-2
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)