Searching for hierarchical clusters of disease: Spatial patterns of sudden infant death syndrome

Abstract

This paper presents simple and inexpensive methods of recognizing patterns of epidemicity of varying intensity in geographical areas, and of testing for clusters. These methods are designed for available data which are reported on a county (or other geographical unit) basis. The methods are based on a simulated distribution of county “adjacencies”. An interesting pattern of the incidence of sudden infant death syndrome is recognized.