Disease Mapping with WinBUGS and MLwiN

Disease mapping involves the analysis of geo--referenced disease incidence data and has many applications, for example within resource allocation, cluster alarm analysis, and ecological studies.

There is a real need amongst public health workers for simpler and more efficient tools for the analysis of geo--referenced disease incidence data.

Bayesian and multilevel methods provide the required efficiency, and with the emergence of software packages -- such as WinBUGS and MLwiN -- are now easy to implement in practice. Provides an introduction to Bayesian and multilevel modelling in disease mapping. Adopts a practical approach, with many detailed worked examples. Includes introductory material on WinBUGS and MLwiN. Discusses three applications in detail -- relative risk estimation, focused clustering, and ecological analysis. Suitable for public health workers and epidemiologists with a sound statistical knowledge. Supported by a Website featuring data sets and WinBUGS and MLwiN programs. Disease Mapping with WinBUGS and MLwiN provides a practical introduction to the use of software for disease mapping for researchers, practitioners and graduate students from statistics, public health and epidemiology who analyse disease incidence data.