Bayesian Disease Mapping: Hierarchical Modeling in Spatial Epidemiology(Chapman & Hall/CRC Interdisciplinary Statistics)

Focusing on data commonly found in public health databases and clinical settings, Bayesian Disease Mapping: Hierarchical Modeling in Spatial Epidemiology provides an overview of the main areas of Bayesian hierarchical modeling and its application to the geographical analysis of disease. The book explores a range of topics in Bayesian inference and modeling, including Markov chain Monte Carlo methods, Gibbs sampling, the Metropolis--Hastings algorithm, goodness-of-fit measures, and residual diagnostics. It also focuses on special topics, such as cluster detection; space-time modeling; and multivariate, survival, and longitudinal analyses. The author explains how to apply these methods to disease mapping using numerous real-world data sets pertaining to cancer, asthma, epilepsy, foot and mouth disease, influenza, and other diseases. In the appendices, he shows how R and WinBUGS can be useful tools in data manipulation and simulation. Applying Bayesian methods to the modeling of georeferenced health data, Bayesian Disease Mapping proves that the application of these approaches to biostatistical problems can yield important insights into data.

Table of Contents:
BACKGROUND Introduction Data Sets Bayesian Inference and Modeling Likelihood Models Prior Distributions Posterior Distributions Predictive Distributions Bayesian Hierarchical Modeling Hierarchical Models Posterior Inference Exercises Computational Issues Posterior Sampling Markov Chain Monte Carlo Methods Metropolis and Metropolis–Hastings Algorithms Gibbs Sampling Perfect Sampling Posterior and Likelihood Approximations Exercises Residuals and Goodness-of-Fit Model Goodness-of-Fit Measures General Residuals Bayesian Residuals Predictive Residuals and the Bootstrap Interpretation of Residuals in a Bayesian Setting Exceedence Probabilities Exercises THEMES Disease Map Reconstruction and Relative Risk Estimation An Introduction to Case Event and Count Likelihoods Specification of the Predictor in Case Event and Count Models Simple Case and Count Data Models with Uncorrelated Random Effects Correlated Heterogeneity Models Convolution Models Model Comparison and Goodness-of-Fit Diagnostics Alternative Risk Models Edge Effects Exercises Disease Cluster Detection Cluster Definitions Cluster Detection using Residuals Cluster Detection using Posterior Measures Cluster Models Edge Detection and Wombling Ecological Analysis General Case of Regression Biases and Misclassification Error Putative Hazard Models Multiple Scale Analysis Modifiable Areal Unit Problem (MAUP) Misaligned Data Problem (MIDP) Multivariate Disease Analysis Notation for Multivariate Analysis Two Diseases Multiple Diseases Spatial Survival and Longitudinal Analyses General Issues Spatial Survival Analysis Spatial Longitudinal Analysis Extensions to Repeated Events Spatiotemporal Disease Mapping Case Event Data Count Data Alternative Models Infectious Diseases Appendix A: Basic R and WinBUGS Appendix B: Selected WinBUGS Code Appendix C: R Code for Thematic Mapping References Index

About the Author :
University of South Carolina, Columbia, USA University of Kent, UK University of Copenhagen, Denmark Utrecht University, The Netherlands University of California, Berkeley, USA

Review :
This book provides a technical grounding in spatial models while maintaining a strong grasp on applied epidemiological problems. ! A welcome effort is made to clarify concepts which might, in other texts, have been skimmed over in a rush to fit models. ! From the start, the concepts are illustrated with disease mapping examples, including R and WinBUGS code. ! The book has relatively few errors ! I recommend the book. It taught me new ideas and clarified existing ones. I shall continue to use it and I expect it to be useful for other statisticians with an interest in spatial analysis. --Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, Series A, April 2011 Lawson begins by building a solid Bayesian background ! The remaining seven chapters provide a thorough review of modeling relative risk ! Lawson provides well-written reviews of many topics and many aspects of those topics are covered in his reviews. The literature cited is huge and diverse, showing the current importance of the subjects covered. One can also gain hands-on training in analysis and visual presentations ! by following carefully the detailed introduction to R and WinBUGS given in the book. Many important data sets used in the book are available online! --International Statistical Review (2009), 77, 2 This book is an excellent reference for intermediate learners of Bayesian disease mapping ! many of the methodologies discussed in this book are applicable not only to spatial epidemiology but also to many other fields that utilize spatial data. --J. Law, Biometrics, June 2009