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Geographic Variation in Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: A Study of Linking Risk Factors and Built Environment at a Local Health Unit in Canada

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Geospatial Technologies for Urban Health

Part of the book series: Global Perspectives on Health Geography ((GPHG))

Abstract

Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is one of the leading causes of death in Canada. CVD risk factors and outcome data are used to determine trends of disease risk to inform public health program planning for prevention and control of disease and risk reduction or elimination. Recent efforts to map CVD and its associated risk factors at the health region level have provided further insights into variation in determinants across populations. In this chapter, geographic information system (GIS) and spatial analysis were utilized to enhance CVD surveillance to identify the patterns and relationships between CVD mortality and its potential risk factors. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression and Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) approaches were used to explore geographical variation in the rate of CVD mortality. After consideration of potential environmental, epidemiological, demographic, and socioeconomic factors, spatial statistics analysis revealed geospatial clustering for CVD mortality and the “hot spots” or “cold spots.” Within a mixed rural-suburban setting in Ontario, Canada, there was an evidence of significant built environmental factors and immigrant time associated with the rate of CVD mortality. Moreover, this pilot work suggests that the integration of geospatial information with routinely collected surveillance data appears feasible within the structure and resources of local public health units as a means to assist in the identification of regional variation in the burden of CVD.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by the Public Health Agency of Canada and involved the collaboration of partners from the Regional Municipality of York (Public Health and Geomatics Branches), Queen’s University (Department of Geography), and York University (School of Kinesiology and Health Science) in the development of the current framework and conducting of the statistical and geospatial analysis. The authors would like to thank Dr. Eric Weir, Shelley Stalker, Bill Kou, and Shanna Hoetmer at York Region Public Health for their help on this research. Three anonymous reviewers and the book editors have provided constructive suggestions for improving the quality of this chapter.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China

    Lei Wang

  2. Department of Geography and Planning, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Lei Wang & Dongmei Chen

  3. School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University, Toronto, ON, Canada

    Chris I. Ardern

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  1. Lei Wang
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  2. Chris I. Ardern
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  3. Dongmei Chen
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Correspondence to Dongmei Chen .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX, USA

    Yongmei Lu

  2. Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, Charlotte, NC, USA

    Eric Delmelle

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Wang, L., Ardern, C.I., Chen, D. (2020). Geographic Variation in Cardiovascular Disease Mortality: A Study of Linking Risk Factors and Built Environment at a Local Health Unit in Canada. In: Lu, Y., Delmelle, E. (eds) Geospatial Technologies for Urban Health. Global Perspectives on Health Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19573-1_3

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