Increasingly stricter and wider official efforts have been made by multilevel Chinese governments for seeking the improvements of the environment and public health status. However, the contributions of these efforts to environmental changes and spatiotemporal variations in some environmental diseases have been seldom explored and evaluated. Gastric cancer mortality (GCM) data in two periods (I: 2004⁻2006 and II: 2012⁻2015) was collected for the analysis of its spatiotemporal variations on the grid scale across S County in Central China. Some environmental and socioeconomic factors, including river, farmlands, topographic condition, population density, and gross domestic products (GDP) were obtained for the exploration of their changes and their relationships with GCM's spatiotemporal variations through a powerful tool (GeoDetector, GD). During 2004⁻2015, S County achieved environmental improvement and socioeconomic development, as well as a clear decline of the age-standardized mortality rate of gastric cancer from 35.66/10⁵ to 23.44/10⁵. Moreover, the GCM spatial patterns changed on the grid scale, which was spatially associated with the selected influencing factors. Due to the improvement of rivers' water quality, the distance from rivers posed relatively larger but reversed impacts on the gridded GCM. In addition, higher population density and higher economic level (GDP) acted as important protective factors, whereas the percentage of farmlands tended to have adverse effects on the gridded GCM in period II. It can be concluded that the decline of GCM in S County was spatiotemporally associated with increasingly strengthened environmental managements and socioeconomic developments over the past decade. Additionally, we suggest that more attentions should be paid to the potential pollution caused by excessive pesticides and fertilizers on the farmlands in S County. This study provided a useful clue for local authorities adopting more targeted measures to improve environment and public health in the regions similar to S County.
Keywords: GeoDetector; environmental improvement; gastric cancer mortality; socioeconomic development; spatiotemporal variation.