Environmental factors associated with the spatial distribution of female breast cancers in Taiwan (2005-2007).
Date Issued
2012
Date
2012
Author(s)
Chang, Li-Hsin
Abstract
The combination of Epidemiology and Earth Sciences has become a research trend lately. The purpose of this research is to understand the occurrence rate, the prevalence of breast cancer and the death rate among Taiwanese women whom are below forty and above forty years old through disease mapping and spatial analysis regarding different years of spatial distribution and temporal and spatial variation. Thus, use spatial statistical method to explore the spatial characteristics of the data and to search for the social causative agent among breast cancer cluster region.
The subjects were female breast cancer patient. Based on cross-sectional study design and secondary data analysis apply 2005~2007 Cancer Registry Database, Cause of Death File Database and Department of Health of Rural Area Cancer Treatment Statistics – Breast Cancer. Spatial analysis is based on K Nearest Neighbors method and five of the nearest towns (k=5) are adjacent areas’ spatial weight matrix. The disease has global spatial autocorrelation index, Moran’s I and regional spatial autocorrelation index, LISA, are as spatial dependency analysis to investigate whether breast cancer is cluster phenomenon or not. This research will further explore the correlation between the society environmental factor and breast cancer, the use of space delay model of spatial proximity effect and geographically weighted regression to explain the geographic mutation.
Within 2005 to 2007, the three year period has shown that breast cancer under age of 40 quasi-standardized prevalence and over forty years old, breast cancer standardized incidence and prevalence of significant clustering phenomenon among Taiwanese women. However, there is no indication showing that death rate does not appear to be cluster phenomenon among all ages. To further understand clustering phenomenon of social environmental factor, the result shows that urbanization, fast food chain stores density, and average female working hours are significant and positive correlation. Though, there is no valid statistics of industrial area. It is found that the use of space delay model of spatial proximity effect has significant impact and because of that, geographically weighted regression has been used to explain the geographic mutation. After comparing geographically weighted regression and traditional regression model, geographically weighted regression has more accurate parameter estimation than traditional regression model. It is indicated that geographically weighted regression method can be seen as the best analysis model regarding investigate the impact of social environmental factor towards breast cancer while controlling geographic variation.
This research uses spatial analysis to comprehend the relationship between breast cancer among Taiwanese women and social environmental risk factor. As a result, breast cancer does exist the characteristics of locational factor. Hope the relevant units for breast cancer prevention can be more adapted to local conditions in order to achieve effective prevention.
Subjects
Breast cancer
Environment factors
Spatial analysis
Geographically weighted regression
Geographically spatial lag model.
Type
thesis
File(s)![Thumbnail Image]()
Loading...
Name
index.html
Size
23.27 KB
Format
HTML
Checksum
(MD5):a89d32baa948da998fdd734c21eef414