Background: The objective of this study was to demonstrate the use of an association rule mining approach to discover associations between selected socioeconomic variables and the four most leading causes of cancer mortality in the United States. An association rule mining algorithm was applied to extract associations between the 1988-1992 cancer mortality rates for colorectal, lung, breast, and prostate cancers defined at the Health Service Area level and selected socioeconomic variables from the 1990 United States census. Geographic information system technology was used to integrate these data which were defined at different spatial resolutions, and to visualize and analyze the results from the association rule mining process.
Results: Health Service Areas with high rates of low education, high unemployment, and low paying jobs were found to associate with higher rates of cancer mortality.
Conclusion: Association rule mining with geographic information technology helps reveal the spatial patterns of socioeconomic inequality in cancer mortality in the United States and identify regions that need further attention.