News & Events

2010

January 2010

Mapping Sustainability and Tufts University's InForMID researchers have developed a dynamic mapping methodology to help investigate links between diseases and environmental exposures. The study is published online in the journal of Environmental Health. To illustrate the methodology, Salmonella infections in the U.S. elderly are superimposed onto maps of environmental exposures such as average monthly temperature and livestock production. The study features a set of principles we developed to enhance the use of dynamic mapping technology in epidemiological research.

“Dynamic mapping creates a visual representation of data over time, allowing us to detect relationships between disease and environmental factors that cannot be deciphered from static maps. It enables us to pose new hypotheses about the origins of an outbreak, patterns of disease spread, peak timing of seasonal outbreaks, and clustering of diseases,” said senior author Elena Naumova, PhD, professor of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.

Co-authors included first author Denise A. Castronovo, MS, Mapping Sustainability, LLC; and Kenneth KH Chui, PhD, MPH, research assistant professor in the department of public health and community medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine.

This study was funded by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, both parts of the National Institutes of Health.

Castronovo DA, Chui KKH, Naumova EN. Environmental Health. 2009, 8:61. “Dynamic maps: a visual-analytic methodology for exploring spatio-temporal disease patterns.” Published online December 30, 2009, doi:10.1186/1476-069X-8-61  

2008

October 14, 2008

On October 14, 2006, Denise Castronovo presented Mapping Sustainability’s work on spatial and temporal dynamic mapping of public health data at the International Society for Environmental Epidemiology and International Society for Exposure Analysis Joint Annual Conference 2008 in Pasadena, California. The presentation, "Visualization of Spatial and Temporal Data", was part of a special topic symposium entitled, "Assessing Seasonality for Evironmental Epidemiology." This symposium addressed:

• The multitude of dimensions associated with periodic fluctuations in health outcomes and environmental factors
• The need for seasonality assessment in understanding environmental drivers of infectious diseases
• The importance of this aspect of environmental epidemiology for policy making and public health professionals

Photograph of the InForMID Team who presented at the conference. From left to right: Dr. Elena Naumova (Tufts University School of Medicine), Rajiv Sarkar (Christian Medical College, India), Dr. Gagandeep Kang (Christian Medical College, India), Jyotsna Jagai (Tufts University School of Medicine), Ken Chui (Tufts University School of Medicine), Denise Castronovo (Mapping Sustainability).

Symposium Presentations:

• Elena Naumova. Associate Professor, Tufts University School of Medicine, Dept. of Public Health & Family Medicine
  Title:  Principles of Seasonality Assessment
  

• Gagandeep Kang. Professor, Department of Gastrointestinal Sciences, Christian Medical College in Vellore, India
  Title:  Seasonality of Rotavirus: A Call for Interdisciplinary Approach

• Ken Chui. Ph.D. Candidate, Tufts University School of Medicine, Dept. of Public Health & Family Medicine
  Title:  Seasonality in Salmonella Infections in the US, 1991-2004

• Jyotsna Jagai . Ph.D. Candidate, Tufts University School of Medicine, Dept. of Public Health & Family Medicine
  Title:  Variations in Seasonal Patterns of Gastrointestinal Infections within a Watershed

• Denise Castronovo. President, Mapping Sustainability, LLC
  Title:  Visualization of Spatial and Temporal Data with Dynamic Maps

 

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Denise Castronovo presented
Dynamic Mapping as a tool for
epidemiologists at the International
Society for Environmental Epidemiology
Annual Conference.

Denise Castronovo presented
"A Conceptual Framework for
Visualizing Seasonality in Public Health
Data Using Dynamic Maps" at the
2008 APHA Annual Conference.