For several months I have been working on a project within the Northern Ecuadorian Amazon (NEA) that examines neighborhood effects on malaria among colonists living within the region. The preliminary study results are being presented this week (by my collaborator, Patricia E. Polo) at the SouthEastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG) meeting. You can check out our poster here.
The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of land use/land cover (for example - forest, water, pasture) and physical access to roads (e.g., distance to nearest road) on malaria cases reported by households in the NEA during 1999. We used secondary household demographic and socioeconomic data collected as part of the Ecuador Project at the UNC-Chapel Hill, and classified satellite imagery of the same area. Our results indicate that there are effects of physical access and land use/land cover on malaria incidence among colonists in our study area. In the near future, we will be including individual rather than household level data (e.g., age, sex, occupation, etc.) to control for malaria incidence and to improve our understanding of the relationship between environment and health in the NEA.
(And thanks to Tom Swayze at the UNC Carolina Population Center for his help creating the beautiful poster above).
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