Defining urban and rural areas in US epidemiologic studies
Defining urban and rural areas in US epidemiologic studies
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DOI：
10.1007/s11524-005-9016-3
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发表时间：
2006-03-01
影响因子：
6.6
通讯作者：
Ricketts, TC
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Hall, SA;Kaufman, JS;Ricketts, TC
流行病学家对影响健康的社区特征越来越感兴趣。在美国，农村健康差距是近年来关注的焦点，并已成为改善的优先事项。虽然社会科学家和人口学家使用了许多关于城市和农村的标准化定义，但这些定义是在卫生研究人员不熟悉的来源中发现的，而且在很大程度上没有用于公共卫生研究。本文简要回顾了美国地理亚单位中城市和农村的一些现有定义及其各自的优点和缺点。例如，有些定义比其他定义更适合于反映获得保健服务的情况。作者将不同的定义应用于乳腺癌发病率，以显示城市/农村比率比较如何因定义的选择而变化，并发现二分法定义可能无法捕捉非常农村地区的变化。需要进一步研究这些措施在健康研究中的效用。
Among epidemiologists, there has been increasing interest in the characteristics of communities that influence health. In the United States, the rural health disparity has been a recent focus of attention and made a priority for improvement. While many standardized definitions of urban and rural exist and are used by social scientists and demographers, they are found in sources unfamiliar to health researchers and have largely not been used in public health studies. This paper briefly reviews some available definitions of urban and rural for American geographic subunits and their respective strengths and weaknesses. For example, some definitions are better suited than others for capturing access to health care services. The authors applied different definitions to breast cancer incidence rates to show how urban/rural rate ratio comparisons would vary by choice of definition and found that dichotomous definitions may fail to capture variability in very rural areas. Further study of the utility of these measures in health studies is warranted.