Journal Papers by Zaria Tatalovich
… and planning. A, Jan 1, 2010
Conference Proceedings by Zaria Tatalovich
We describe an approach to developing next generation health information portals. This prototype ... more We describe an approach to developing next generation health information portals. This prototype portal was developed to address two complementary goals (1) design and create a site where people can explore potential relationships between selected health-related behaviors, policies, and demographic data (2) explore semantic web technologies and linked data as enabling technologies for next generation health informatics portals. Our multidisciplinary team includes population and behavioral scientists, social network scientists, statisticians, and computer scientists focused on creating innovative proof of concept applications that integrate complex health data in understandable and usable ways. Our semantic-web based framework allowed us to design exemplar community health portal applications, with an initial focus on tobacco-related health data such as smoking prevalence and tobacco policies (taxation and smoking bans). We describe our approach, two semantically-enabled tobacco-related applications, and discuss how this approach can be used in a broad spectrum of community health applications.
Papers by Zaria Tatalovich
Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 2022
Background: In 1971, the National Cancer Act created a process to recognize the leadership, facil... more Background: In 1971, the National Cancer Act created a process to recognize the leadership, facilities, and research efforts at cancer centers throughout the United States. Toward this goal, each NCI-designated cancer center defines and describes a catchment area to which they tailor specific scientific and community engagement activities. Methods: The geographically defined catchment areas of 63 NCI-designated comprehensive and clinical cancer centers are collated and presented visually. In addition, the NCI-designated cancer center catchment areas are geographically linked with publicly available data sources to aggregate sociodemographic and epidemiologic characteristics across the NCI Cancer Centers Program. Results: The national map portrays the size, shape, and locations for 63 catchment areas of the 71 NCI-designated cancer centers. The findings illustrate the geographic extent of the NCI Cancer Centers Program during the 50th anniversary of the National Cancer Act. Conclusio...
Additional file 1 Table S1. Categories for variables used to define person-year table. Supplement... more Additional file 1 Table S1. Categories for variables used to define person-year table. Supplementary statistical methods. Table S2. Curvature in exposure response of relative risk of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) with UVR cumulative radiant exposure, using AVGLO and NASA TOMS measures of UVR among 63,912 white technologists. Table S3. Modification by age of excess absolute risk and excess relative risk of basal cell carcinoma (BCC) in relation to ultraviolet radiation (UVR) cumulative radiant exposure. Table S4. Excess absolute risk (+ 95% CI) for AVGLO and NASA TOMS data. Figure S1. Cumulative potential UVR radiant exposure, derived from AVGLO and from NASA TOMS data, by age: (a) age 20 years, (b) age 40 years, (c) age 60 years, and (d) age 80 years. Reproduced from Little et al. [20].
Additional file 2. LQ1 questionnaire, LQ2 questionnaire, LQ3 questionnaire and supplementary skin... more Additional file 2. LQ1 questionnaire, LQ2 questionnaire, LQ3 questionnaire and supplementary skin cancer questionnaire used in USRT
Energy Balance and Cancer, 2019
Mapping public health data provides valuable insights into geography of diseases. Maps and mappin... more Mapping public health data provides valuable insights into geography of diseases. Maps and mapping systems can also be a useful practical tool for public health planning; the identification of areas of elevated cancer incidence or mortality can inform optimal spatial allocation of resources as well as targeted interventions aimed at cancer prevention and control. This chapter addresses the role of mapping in cancer research and the utility of mapping systems for cancer control activities through a series of examples and best practices. The chapter is organized into three sections. The introductory section briefly traces the evolution from paper maps to modern digital maps and cancer atlases, highlighting their value for understanding the geography of cancer. The second section discusses the relevance of mapping in cancer research and provides examples from recent literature where maps have been used to aid cancer research and inform interventions. The third section focuses on modern cancer mapping systems, their development, design considerations, functionality, and application through a series of examples demonstrating their value for informing cancer control activities.
Environmental Health, 2019
Background Basal cell carcinoma of the skin (BCC) is the most common cancer in populations of Eur... more Background Basal cell carcinoma of the skin (BCC) is the most common cancer in populations of European ancestry. Although consistently linked with basal cell carcinoma of the skin in case-control studies, few prospective cohort studies have evaluated the shape of the exposure-response of basal cell carcinoma associated with cumulative radiant solar ultraviolet exposure (UVR). Methods We followed 63,912 white cancer-free US radiologic technologists from entry (1983–1998) to exit (2003–2005) with known ultraviolet irradiance at up to 5 residential locations. Using generalized-additive and relative risk models we analyzed the exposure-response of basal cell carcinomas associated with ambient cumulative ultraviolet radiant exposure using ground-based National Solar Radiation database Average Daily Total Global data and satellite-based National Aeronautics and Space Administration Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer data. Results There were 2151 technologists with an incident primary basal ...
Tobacco Prevention & Cessation, 2017
Annals of Surgical Oncology, 2019
Photochemistry and Photobiology, 2018
International journal of environmental research and public health, Jan 26, 2018
In recent years, the United States has had a relatively poor performance with respect to life exp... more In recent years, the United States has had a relatively poor performance with respect to life expectancy compared to the other developed nations. Urban sprawl is one of the potential causes of the high rate of mortality in the United States. This study investigated cross-sectional associations between sprawl and life expectancy for metropolitan counties in the United States in 2010. In this study, the measure of life expectancy in 2010 came from a recently released dataset of life expectancies by county. This study modeled average life expectancy with a structural equation model that included five mediators: annual vehicle miles traveled (VMT) per household, average body mass index, crime rate, and air quality index as mediators of sprawl, as well as percentage of smokers as a mediator of socioeconomic status. After controlling for sociodemographic characteristics, this study found that life expectancy was significantly higher in compact counties than in sprawling counties. Compactn...
Cancer epidemiology, biomarkers & prevention : a publication of the American Association for Cancer Research, cosponsored by the American Society of Preventive Oncology, Apr 1, 2017
Cancer incidence and mortality display strong geographic patterns worldwide and in the United Sta... more Cancer incidence and mortality display strong geographic patterns worldwide and in the United States (1, 2). The environment where individuals live, work, and play is increasingly being recognized as important across the cancer control continuum, including the risk of cancer development, detection, diagnosis, treatment, mortality, and survivorship (3-5). At the same time, emergent technological capacity in geographic information systems (GIS) and mapping, along with increasing sophistication in applied spatial methods, has resulted in a growing research community developing and applying geospatial approaches in health research (5). Through collaborative, transdisciplinary efforts, and continued data collection efforts, there is great potential to apply these emerging geospatial approaches to various aspects of cancer prevention and control to inform etiology and target interventions and implementation of efficacious risk-reducing strategies. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev; 26(4); ...
International journal of health geographics, Aug 3, 2016
Spatial and space-time scan statistics are widely used in disease surveillance to identify geogra... more Spatial and space-time scan statistics are widely used in disease surveillance to identify geographical areas of elevated disease risk and for the early detection of disease outbreaks. With a scan statistic, a scanning window of variable location and size moves across the map to evaluate thousands of overlapping windows as potential clusters, adjusting for the multiple testing. Almost always, the method will find many very similar overlapping clusters, and it is not useful to report all of them. This paper proposes to use the Gini coefficient to help select which of the many overlapping clusters to report. The Gini coefficient provides a quick and intuitive way to evaluate the degree of the heterogeneity of the collection of clusters, which is useful to explain how well the cluster collection reveal the underlying true cluster patterns. Using simulation studies and real cancer mortality data, it is compared with the traditional approach for reporting non-overlapping clusters. The Gi...
Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, 2014
Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the US and is the leading cause of death. The accu... more Lung cancer is the third most common cancer in the US and is the leading cause of death. The accurate profiling of lung cancer (i.e. depiction of the magnitude of this disease among the different population subgroups at the state and local levels) is necessary to inform the development of effective cancer control programs in the areas most impacted, and subsequently, reduce the cancer burden. One of the prerequisites for accurate profiling of cancer is a high quality cancer data. Unfortunately, researchers often rely on a combination of data sources that may differ in data quality, completeness and other important attributes. The State Cancer Profiles website is perhaps the most comprehensive, and high quality resource that provides national, state and local level cancer data collected from CDC's National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) and NCI's Surveillance, Epidemiology and End Results (SEER) Program. Lung cancer data from State Cancer Profiles can be utilized to asse...
2013 46th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2013
Social Science & Medicine, 2007
Uploads
Journal Papers by Zaria Tatalovich
Conference Proceedings by Zaria Tatalovich
Papers by Zaria Tatalovich