Long term drug treatment with drugs such as ACE inhibitors and statins has been shown to protect patients with coronary artery problems from subsequent events. But poor adherence to these treatments is common. To better understand this phenomenon, CSCAR staff consultant Giselle Kolenic collaborated with researchers from the UM Schools of Medicine and Pharmacy to conduct a geographical analysis of treatment compliance (Hoang et al., Pharmacotherapy; Oct, 2011). Using home addresses and compliance information from a patient registry, the researchers carried out a hot-spot analysis to identify geographic areas where compliance rates were unusually high or low. One potentially important trend that emerged from the team’s findings is that compliance is lower for patients living further from the hospital where they were treated. This study illustrates that geographic statistical analysis can be an important tool for understanding health behavior.
