Costa Rican Respiratory Hospitalizations Linked to Climate and Pollution

Weekly data from 2000 to 2019 quantifies the lagged effects of climate and air pollution on respiratory hospitalizations in Costa Rica's peripheral regions. Shu Wei Chou-Chen authored this methodological study, which combines Distributed Lag Nonlinear Models with Generalized Linear Mixed Models to analyze environmental health risks. The analysis focuses on low-population-density areas outside the Central Valley, including Caribbean and Pacific coasts.

Use Cases

• Model the nonlinear relationship between aerosol optical depth (AOD) and weekly respiratory hospitalization counts using distributed lag nonlinear models.
• Assess the relative risk of hospitalization associated with precipitation extremes and high relative humidity across different peripheral subregions.
• Incorporate seasonal effects and a population offset variable to account for subregional differences in spatiotemporal health analysis.
• Apply zero-inflated statistical distributions to model overdispersion and excess zeros in the weekly hospitalization count data.

Strengths

• 20-year temporal coverage from 2000 to 2019 provides a long-term perspective on environmental health trends.
• Analysis integrates four key environmental variables: temperature, precipitation, relative humidity, and aerosol optical depth (AOD).
• Methodological framework combines advanced statistical techniques (DLNM and GLMM) specifically for zero-inflated count data.

Limitations

• The dataset's underlying row count and specific column structure are not provided in the source description.
• Geographic coverage is limited to peripheral, low-population-density regions of Costa Rica, excluding the Central Valley.
• The 11.1 MB file size suggests the primary data may be summarized or embedded within a PDF, limiting direct analysis.

Provenance

Source

Shu Wei Chou-Chen via figshare.

Collection Method

Weekly data on environmental variables (temperature, precipitation, humidity, AOD) combined with respiratory hospitalization records, analyzed using DLNM and GLMM with zero-inflated distributions.

Time Range

2000 to 2019

Freshness

Data covers up to 2019, with the study last updated in April 2026.

Geography

Peripheral regions of Costa Rica (outside the Central Valley), including Caribbean and Pacific coasts and border areas.