GIS approaches to the problem of disease clusters: a brief commentary

This commentary considers issues raised in a recent article on GIS-based ap proaches: to modeling disease clusters. 'Modeling exposure opportunities' ( Sabel, Gatrell & Loytonen et al., 2000. Social Science and Medicine, 50, 11 21 37) and the general problem of mapping disease clusters. It notes that t he authors' advocate a fundamentally statistical approach, Kerneling estima tion, to map the occurrence of a specific illness whose etiology is unknown . Epidemiologists, ironically, have advocated a fundamentally cartographic solution, the cartogram, in addressing the general problem of disease clust ers. The advantages and limits of both approaches are reviewed and the pote ntial for their comparison in a single study suggested. Most importantly, p erhaps. the commentary seeks to join the epidemiological and medical geogra phic literatures as they pertain to this analytic problem and medical carto graphy's potential (GIS-based or traditional) to understand disease etiolog y. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.