Geographical health data maps for Carle Foundation Hospital and the assessment of rural cancer rates in Illinois

Abstract

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in the United States and in the state of Illinois. With numerous research efforts put into finding the causes of cancers, many genomic cancer risk factors have been confirmed, e.g. the importance of HER2 gene in breast cancer growth. However, how the environmental factors and socioeconomic status influence the cancer development remains unclear. To understand more about how the environmental and socioeconomic factors lead to cancers, we analyzed a few well-known risk factors on county and ZIP Code levels, including pesticides use, poverty level, income, water pollution, tap water quality, and industrial wastes. In these analyses, no significant correlation was found between the cancer incidence rate and the environmental and socioeconomic factors. Since there is a lack of strong correlations, a cancer development model based on environmental and socioeconomic factors cannot be built. Instead, we analyzed the health data on geographical maps by visualizing the statistics of risk factors on county and ZIP Code levels on a map. Different types of environmental and socioeconomic factors of interest are overlaid on the map to show the statistics of Illinois. We believe the risk factor geographical maps can help clinicians with cancers diagnosis, as well as further understand the development of cancers.