Regional Variations in Cancer

Last month the Office for National Statistics released the Cancer registration statistics, England: 2017. These cancer statistics revealed that there are distinct regional variations in the cancer incidence rates in England. These regional variations are most apparent when the incidence rates are visualized on a map.

Cancer in England uses the ONS data to map the incidence rates of cancer in the regions of England. I created the map using the Leaflet mapping library. The basic structure of the map was created by combining the Leaflet Interactive Choropleth Map with code borrowed from Mapbox's Fly to a location based on scroll position demo story map.

While creating the map I found two tools very useful in helping me to create the GeoJSON for encoding the polygons for the regions of England. I used mapshaper, an online tool for simplifying shape files and GeoJSON, to drastically reduce the size of my GeoJSON file. I also used geojson.io to painlessly add the cancer incidence rate data to each of the regional polygons.

Please feel free to reuse the map for any purpose. Also feel free to adapt the choropleth story map code for any purpose. The code for Cancer in England can be cloned on Glitch.