How can using GIS help cancer research and cancer control activities?

挑战

An individual’s health is affected by one’s “spatial context,” that is, where one lives. Spatial context is characterized by 3 domains that influence health through local exposures, 风险, 可用的护理:

• Specific geographic/environmental conditions, 特别是, 空气的质量, 水, 还有食物供应
• Neighborhood characteristics that influence lifestyle and stress, 比如犯罪, 容易锻炼, 获得烟草, 酒精, 和非法药物
• 卫生服务, 比如可用的诊所, 医院, and appropriate numbers of primary care and specialist health professionals

The 国家癌症研究所(NCI) is investigating how spatial context affects cancer risk and asked 趣赢平台 to contribute its geographic information system (GIS) expertise to the effort.

解决方案

趣赢平台 is currently working directly with individual state cancer registries and coordinating with NCI in collaboration with the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) on the NCI/NAACCR Zone Design Project. The project aims to develop a set of cancer reporting zones across the U.S. that are more suitable for cancer data reporting than counties.

We are assisting in building residential histories using commercial vendor data linked to SEER patients for the purposes of enhancing data linkages between SEER and other data sources (e.g., pharmacy data) and to facilitate research, including environmental exposure studies. 趣赢平台 conducted a pilot study to determine the best available commercial vendor data to use for the data linkage, and to develop algorithms to build residential histories from raw address data. 趣赢平台 is currently working on enhancing the algorithms that will help build residential histories for all linked SEER patients.

We are providing recommendations on developing GIS web mapping tools, 包括选择绘图方案的工具, 癌症发病率分类, 选择要映射的变量. 除了, 趣赢平台与NCI合作开发地图故事, which use narrative and map-based explanations to explore various cancer-related topics.

We provided recommendations on the redesign of NCI’s “Geographic Information Systems and Science for Cancer Control” website and continue to provide guidance for updates to the website. The site is a central source of information about GIS and related resources for use by the public, 癌症研究人员, 还有媒体. 趣赢平台’s recommendations will include site content organization and placement, 平面设计, 维护和更新.

结果

趣赢平台’s contributions to the SEER program will help establish a GIS specialty infrastructure to continue investigations into spatial context and cancer risk.