Spatial Variations and Gender Differences in the Associations Between Lung Cancer Mortality Rate and Contextual Factors: A County-Level Cross-Sectional Ecological Analysis.

To develop effective health policies and prevention strategies for reducing lung cancer mortality, it is essential to understand its associations with contextual factors, yet prior studies have produced inconsistent results suggesting the associations might vary over space. Very few studies have explicitly examined gender-specific spatial variations in the associations and investigated how the spatial patterns are shaped by community socioeconomic characteristics. This study aimed to examine spatial variations and gender differences in associations of lung cancer mortality rate with contextual environmental, socioeconomic, and health factors in response to the varying socioeconomic characteristics across 159 counties in Georgia, USA for 2019-2023. Following a cross-sectional ecological study design based on county-level aggregated data, this study linked three environmental, fifteen socioeconomic, and fourteen health factors to lung cancer mortality rates for males and females, and conducted various statistical and spatial analyses including Geographically Weighted Regression (GWR) to explore the spatially varying associations of lung cancer mortality rate with those contextual factors. As an explanatory local spatial statistical technique, GWR revealed that the associations varied across space and gender, with significant links observed in fewer counties than nonsignificant ones. No significant spatial autocorrelation was detected in the residuals from the GWR models of lung cancer mortality rate for either males or females (I=-0.121, p = 0.064 for males; I=-0.110, p = 0.098 for females). Key findings include: (1) radon was a more consistent factor associated with elevated lung cancer mortality rates than PM