Many diseases have been shown to have some sort of spatial relationship. There are countless projects underway investigating relationships between chemicals in the environment and breast cancer, for instance. Researchers have even discovered a geographical factor related to kidney stones. Apparently there is a "kidney stone" belt in the south, where there are far more occurences than elsewhere in the country. But does that mean it's due to an environmental factor or could it be a social/cultural factor related to diet? Most kidney stones are composed of calcium oxalate which is found in tea so many researchers think the mass consumption of good ol' sweet tea in the south explains the kidney stone belt. Others think the stones are formed more in the south because it gets hotter there than in other regions, causing people to get more dehydrated and allowing stones to form more easily.
The reason I brought this up is because I went to the website of the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services. There you can perform data queries wherein you specify attributes you want to look at. I found a group of diagnosis codes for fibroid related hospital stays (the data available only concern hospital stays and do not include doctor's office visits) and specified that I wanted to see national statistics for all hospital stays throughout the country where the primary reason for that stay was fibroid-related. The data returned are organized in a way that you can see the stats broken down by region and guess what....
The south had double the number of instances than any other region! In fact, each of the other three regions (west, midwest and northeast) was within a couple thousand instances of each other. Perez Hilton says "inneresting..."
I'm always looking for a good excuse to do a GIS so this may be my next project! Stay tuned for the geek maps to start appearing...
P.S. I'm getting out of the house today for lunch outside my kitchen and a walk in the park--so excited!!
