Maria Cristina Schneider and Gustavo Machado, of the Pan American Health Organization, suggest that to respond to the current challenges that the world is facing, the integrated vision that human beings, animals, and the environment are linked has never been so important. Understanding these links is necessary to better recommend strategies to predict, prevent, respond to, and mitigate the challenges, taking into account an environmental and socioeconomic background that might not change in a short period of time, but which could worsen if we do not take action.
Several published studies have analysed the association of infectious diseases with possible environmental or geographical factors as drivers, such as precipitation, temperature, ecoregions, soil types, and altitude; as well as socioeconomic or demographic factors such as gross domestic product, poverty rate, percentage rural
population, cattle raising methods, and agricultural processes. Spatial epidemiology is one method of measuring these drivers that was applied in these studies.
Among authors reviewing the concept of space in epidemiology, Pavlovsky was one of the first researchers to study the interrelated components of microclimate, flora, and fauna in disease occurrence. Considering environmental factors as the basic setting, when human beings penetrate and interfere in this scenario, more components could be added in the form of social determinants. Spatial analyses in epidemiology are a vast field and a viable option to study the geographical distribution of diseases. Different methods could be used, including disease mapping, geographical correlation studies, risk assessment in relation to a point-source or line-source, and disease clustering.
A wide range of methods and software have been developed and applied to understand disease distribution, and used to explore underlying risk factors considered to be spatially, temporally, or spatiotemporally structured. The selection of which analytical tool to use can be a challenge.
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