Spatial Epidemiology is used to describe, quantify and explain the geographical variations of diseases, to evaluate the association between the incidence of diseases and potential risk factors and to identify spatial clusters of diseases. This article goes through the main aspects of spatial epidemiology, starting with an explanation of the importance of mapping health data, an historical perspective of the development of the discipline, a description of spatial data types, some methods of spatial statistics, and the importance of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in the analysis of spatially-referenced data. Some applications of GIS regarding oral health are presented.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
