Investigating the spatial pattern of mortality in Jordan-2008

Abstract

Neighbourhood researches have been growing over the past two decades across the social sciences particularly in the area of public health. Many studies had examined the existence of spatial pattern of mortality in many developing and developed countries in improving the health status and reducing the variation in mortality between regions of such country. Some of these studies found spatial pattern for mortality and some were not using different statistical techniques and geographical mapping. Question was raised whether the spatial pattern of mortality was existed in Jordan? The objective was to investigate the spatial structure of mortality across different areas (governorates) of the country to provide implications for policy makers, investigating the hot spots of mortality, showing a visual picture of health status and reduce the variation in mortality as possible as can by showing the global clustering and local clusters for mortality. The data collected for 12 governorates based on census conducted in 2008. Mapping was used as a first step to conduct visual inspection based on the quantified gradients for mortality using quartiles. Two statistics of univariate spatial autocorrelation based on sharing boundary neighbours, known as global and local Moran's I, were carried out for examining the global clustering and local clusters respectively. All-cause standardized mortality ratios (SMR) have calculated for each governorate. Global Moran's I was found 0.18, z=1.73 with p value=0.08 and permutation p -value=0.02. Out of 12 governorates, three governorates were found as local clusters in mortality as shown from their local Moran's i I values 23 5 ( 0.71, 0.032 ; 0.18, 0.096 ; and 0.38, 0.023)