REVIEW article
Front. Public Health
Sec. Infectious Diseases: Epidemiology and Prevention
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1698964
From Infectious Diseases to Chronic Diseases: The Paradigm Shift of Spatial Epidemiology in Disease Prevention and Control
Provisionally accepted
- 1Xiamen Haicang Hospital, Xiamen, China
- 2Xingtai Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Xingtai, China
- 3QianDongNanZhou Center for Disease Control and Prevention, QianDongNanZhou, China
- 4Honwing pharma(Guizhou)Company Limited, QianDongNanZhou, China
- 5Nanjing Lishui Dongping Street Health Center, Nanjing, China
- 6Community Health Service Center of Jiuxian Tongliang District, Chongqing, China
- 7Fuwai Central China Cardiovascular Hospital, Zhengzhou, China
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Spatial epidemiology, as an important branch of epidemiology, has undergone a significant paradigm shift from infectious disease prevention and control to chronic disease management. This paper systematically reviews the application progress of spatial epidemiology in the study of infectious diseases (e.g., malaria, HIV) and chronic diseases (e.g., cancer, cardiovascular diseases), focusing on its role in identifying spatial distribution patterns of diseases, assessing environmental exposures, and supporting health decision-making. The paper compares the differences in data characteristics, analytical methods, and modeling strategies between infectious and chronic diseases, and discusses the impact of multi-scale analysis, data aggregation, and the Modifiable Areal Unit Problem on research results. Furthermore, this paper reviews the innovative value of Geographic Information Systems, remote sensing technology, mobile positioning, and multi-source data fusion in promoting precision public health practices. Finally, the article points out the current challenges faced by spatial epidemiology in privacy ethics, causal inference, and model robustness, and prospects future directions such as AI-enabled multi-omics integration and spatial decision support systems under global health governance.
Keywords: Spatial Epidemiology, infectious disease prevention and control, Chronic disease management, spatial analysis methods, Data Aggregation Scale, geographic information system
Received: 04 Sep 2025; Accepted: 01 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hu, Li, Yang, Ou, Zhang, Xiao and Yu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Mingyang Yu, 2296991140@qq.com
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