Hot Spot analysis calculates the Getis-Ord Gi* statistics of heart disease rate for each county of Southern United States. The result of this analysis provides a z-score and a p-value to each county to indicate either high or low values cluster spatially. The output map of this analysis visually shows hot spots and cold spots where heart disease is more likely or less likely to occur. Hot spots are colored with warm tone hues, where the darker the red, the higher the heart disease rate; on the other hand, cold spots are colored with cool tone hues, where the darker the blue, the lower the heart disease rate. White hue indicates counties with no statistical significance of clustering of heart disease rate.

 

           

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

          The map shows the hot spots and cold spots of heart disease in the Southern United States in 2016. As the map indicated, the greatest clustering of high heart disease rate is in southern West Virginia, northeastern Tennessee, eastern Kentucky and western Virginia. There also are some smaller spatial clustering of hot spots in southeastern Oklahoma, northern Texas, northern Arkansas, and western Tennessee. All these clusterings of hot spots show at least 90% of confidence that the clustering of high heart disease rate is not occurred by random. In terms of cold spots, which are greatly clustered in western and southern Texas, southeastern Louisiana, northern Georgia, northern Virginia, as well as most counties in the state of Maryland. Again, these areas with low heart disease rate have at least 90% of confidence that the clustering is not random.

 

            In terms of heart disease rate by state, no state is completely covered with high or low heart disease rate, and the pattern varies greatly across states. However, the state of West Virginia generally has the greatest numbers of counties with high heart disease rate. Whereas the state of Maryland and Texas have generally the lowest rate of heart disease.

​

​