A Stabilized Kriging Method for Mapping Disease Rates

Background: Mapping disease rates is an important aspect of epidemiological research because it helps inform public health policy. Disease maps are often drawn according to local administrative areas (LAAs), such as counties, cities, or towns. In LAAs with small populations, disease rates are unstable and are prone to appear extremely high or low. The empirical Bayes methods consider variance differences among different LAAs, thereby stabilizing...