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Assessment of methods for prediction of human West Nile virus (WNV) disease from WNV-infected dead birdsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: This analysis develops a new variable based on WNV-positive dead birds, [(Positive/Tested)*(Population/Area)] to be assessed in future real-time studies for forecasting the number of human cases in a county. A delay period of approximately two weeks between increases in this variable and the human case onset was identified. Several threshold 'signal' values were assessed and found effective at indicating human case risk, although specific thresholds are likely to vary by region and surveillance system differences.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - June 5, 2009 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Anna VekslerMillicent EidsonIgor Zurbenko Source Type: journals

Can we apply the Mendelian randomization methodology without considering epigenetic effects?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: Given an inheritance of gene expression from parents, Mendelian randomization studies not only need to assume a random distribution of alleles in the offspring, but also a random distribution of epigenetic changes (e.g. gene expression) at conception, in order for the core assumptions of the Mendelian randomization methodology to remain valid. As an increasing number of epidemiologists employ Mendelian randomization methods in their research, caution is therefore needed in drawing conclusions from these studies if these assumptions are not met.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - May 11, 2009 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Ikechukwu U Ogbuanu, Hongmei Zhang and Wilfried Karmaus Source Type: journals

Methodological issues in estimating survival in patients with multiple primary cancers: an application to women with breast cancer as a first tumourEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: This method proved to be useful in disentangling the effect of different subsequent cancers on mortality. In our application it shows a worse long-term mortality for women with two cancers than that with BC only. However, the increase in mortality was lower than expected under the additivity assumption.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - February 27, 2009 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Stefano Rosso, Fulvio Ricceri, Lea Terracini and Roberto Zanetti Source Type: journals

Revised estimates of influenza-associated excess mortality, United States, 1995 through 2005Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Background: Excess mortality due to seasonal influenza is thought to be substantial. However, influenza may often not be recognized as cause of death. Imputation methods are therefore required to assess the public health impact of influenza. The purpose of this study was to obtain estimates of monthly excess mortality due to influenza that are based on an epidemiologically meaningful model. Methods and Results: U.S. monthly all-cause mortality, 1995 through 2005, was hierarchically modeled as Poisson variable with a mean that linearly depends both on seasonal covariates and on influenza-certified mortality. It also allowed...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - December 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Ivo M Foppa and Md. M Hossain Source Type: journals

Interpreting results of cluster surveys in emergency settings: is the LQAS test the best option?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Cluster surveys are commonly used in humanitarian emergencies to measure health and nutrition indicators. Deitchler et al. have proposed to use Lot Quality Assurance Sampling (LQAS) hypothesis testing in cluster surveys to classify the prevalence of global acute malnutrition as exceeding or not exceeding the pre-established thresholds. Field practitioners and decision-makers must clearly understand the meaning and implications of using this test in interpreting survey results to make programmatic decisions. We demonstrate that the LQAS test--as proposed by Deitchler et al.--is prone to producing false-positive results and ...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - December 9, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Oleg O Bilukha and Curtis Blanton Source Type: journals

Sample size requirements to detect the effect of a group of genetic variants in case-control studiesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusions: When a significant effect of the group of genetic variants is detected, subsequent multiple tests could be conducted to detect which individual genetic variants and their combinations are associated with disease risk. When testing for an effect size in a group of genetic variants, one can use our global test described in this paper, because the sample size required to detect an effect size in the group is comparatively small. Our method could be viewed as a screening tool for assessing groups of genetic variants involved in pathogenesis and etiology of common complex human diseases.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - December 3, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Ramal Moonesinghe, Quanhe Yang and Muin J Khoury Source Type: journals

Seek, and ye shall find: Accessing the global epidemiological literature in different languagesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The thematic series 'Beyond English: Accessing the global epidemiological literature' in Emerging Themes in Epidemiology highlights the wealth of epidemiological and public health literature in the major languages of the world, and the bibliographic databases through which they can be searched and accessed. This editorial suggests that all systematic reviews in epidemiology and public health should include literature published in the major languages of the world and that the use of regional and non-English bibliographic databases should become routine.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Isaac C-H Fung Source Type: journals

Chinese journals: a guide for epidemiologistsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article therefore provides an overview of the contemporary scene in Chinese biomedical journal publication, Chinese bibliographic databases and Chinese journals in epidemiology, preventive medicine and public health. The challenge of switching to English as the medium of publication, the development of publishing bibliometric data from Chinese databases, the prospect of an Open Access publication model in China, the issue of language bias in literature reviews and the quality of Chinese journals are discussed. Epidemiologists are encouraged to search the Chinese bibliographic databases for Chinese journal articles.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Isaac C-H Fung Source Type: journals

Harnessing the wealth of Chinese scientific literature: schistosomiasis research and control in ChinaEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In conclusion, significant research is published in the Chinese literature, which is relevant for local control measures and global scientific knowledge. Open access should be encouraged and language barriers removed so the wealth of Chinese research can be more fully appreciated by the scientific community.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Qin Liu, Li-Guang Tian, Shu-Hua Xiao, Zhen Qi, Peter Steinmann, Tippi K Mak, Jurg Utzinger and Xiao-Nong Zhou Source Type: journals

Public health and epidemiology journals published in Brazil and other Portuguese speaking countriesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The objective of this paper is to facilitate the access to the public health and epidemiology literature available in Portuguese speaking countries. It was found that it is particularly concentrated in Brazil, with some few examples in Portugal and none in other Portuguese speaking countries. This literature is predominantly written in Portuguese, but also in other languages such as English or Spanish. The paper describes the several journals, as well as the bibliographic databases that index these journals and how to access them. Most journals provide open-access with direct links in the indexing databases. The importance...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Mauricio L Barreto and Rita Barradas Barata Source Type: journals

Does language matter? A case study of epidemiological and public health journals, databases and professional education in French, German and ItalianEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Epidemiology and public health are usually context-specific. Journals published in different languages and countries play a role both as sources of data and as channels through which evidence is incorporated into local public health practice. Databases in these languages facilitate access to relevant journals, and professional education in these languages facilitates the growth of native expertise in epidemiology and public health. However, as English has become the lingua franca of scientific communication in the era of globalisation, many journals published in non-English languages face the difficult dilemma of either sw...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Iacopo Baussano, Patrick Brzoska, Ugo Fedeli, Claudia Larouche, Oliver Razum and Isaac C-H Fung Source Type: journals

Biomedical journals and databases in Russia and Russian language in the former Soviet Union and beyondEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In the 20th century, Russian biomedical science experienced a decline from the blossom of the early years to a drastic state. Through the first decades of the USSR, it was transformed to suit the ideological requirements of a totalitarian state and biased directives of communist leadership. Later, depressing economic conditions and isolation from the international research community further impeded its development. Contemporary Russia has inherited a system of medical education quite different from the west as well as counterproductive regulations for the allocation of research funding. The methodology of medical and epide...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Vasiliy V Vlassov and Kirill D Danishevskiy Source Type: journals

Index medicus for the Eastern Mediterranean regionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The study provides the rationale, history and current status of the Index Medicus for the World Health Organization Eastern Mediterranean Region. The Index is unique in combining the geographic coverage of peer-reviewed health and biomedical journals (408 titles) from the 22 countries of the Region. Compiling and publishing the Index coupled with a document delivery service is an integral part of the WHO Regional Office's knowledge management and sharing programme. In this paper, bibliometric indicators are presented to demonstrate the distribution of journals, articles, languages, subjects and authors as well as availabil...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Najeeb Al-Shorbaji Source Type: journals

Enhancing access to reports of randomized trials published world-wide - the contribution of EMBASE records to the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) in The Cochrane LibraryEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusions: The results of the search to date have greatly increased access to reports of trials in EMBASE, especially in some languages other than English. The search strategy used was subjectively derived from a small 'gold standard' set of test records and was not validated in an independent test set. We intend to design an objectively-derived validated search strategy using logistic regression based on the frequency of occurrence of terms in the approximately 80,000 reports of randomized trials identified compared with the frequency of these terms across the entire EMBASE database.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Carol Lefebvre, Anne Eisinga, Steve McDonald and Nina Paul Source Type: journals

Citation of non-English peer review publications - some Chinese examplesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Articles published in English language journals with citations of non-English peer reviewed materials are not very common today. However, as epidemiologists are becoming more aware of data and information being readily available and accessible in the non-English literature, the question of whether non-English materials can be cited in English language journals and if so, how should they be cited, has become an increasingly important issue. Bringing together personal insights from the author's familiarity with both the English and Chinese language epidemiological literature and results from a survey on the use of citations ...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Isaac C-H Fung Source Type: journals

Citation of non-English peer review publications – some Chinese examplesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Articles published in English language journals with citations of non-English peer reviewed materials are not very common today. However, as epidemiologists are becoming more aware of data and information being readily available and accessible in the non-English literature, the question of whether non-English materials can be cited in English language journals and if so, how should they be cited, has become an increasingly important issue. Bringing together personal insights from the author's familiarity with both the English and Chinese language epidemiological literature and results from a survey on the use of citations ...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Isaac CH Fung Source Type: journals

Enhancing access to reports of randomized trials published world-wide – the contribution of EMBASE records to the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL) in The Cochrane LibraryEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: The results of the search to date have greatly increased access to reports of trials in EMBASE, especially in some languages other than English. The search strategy used was subjectively derived from a small 'gold standard' set of test records and was not validated in an independent test set. We intend to design an objectively-derived validated search strategy using logistic regression based on the frequency of occurrence of terms in the approximately 80,000 reports of randomized trials identified compared with the frequency of these terms across the entire EMBASE database.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Carol Lefebvre, Anne Eisinga, Steve McDonald and Nina Paul Source Type: journals

Widespread rape does not directly appear to increase the overall HIV prevalence in conflict-affected countries: So now what?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
DiscussionOur findings show that even in the most extreme situations, where 15% of the female population was raped, where HIV prevalence among assailants was 8 times the country population prevalence, and where the HIV transmission rate was highest at 4 times the average high rate, widespread rape increased the absolute HIV prevalence of these countries by only 0.023%. These projections support the finding that widespread rape in conflict-affected countries in SSA has not incurred a major direct population-level change in HIV prevalence. However, this must not be interpreted to say that widespread rape does not pose seriou...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - July 29, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Aranka Anema, Michel R Joffres, Edward Mills and Paul B Spiegel Source Type: journals

Hispanic Latin America, Spain and the Spanish-speaking Caribbean: a rich source of reference material for public health, epidemiology and tropical medicineEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
There is a multiplicity of journals originating in Spain and the Spanish-speaking countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (SSLAC) in the health sciences of relevance to the fields of epidemiology and public health. While the subject matter of epidemiology in Spain shares many features with its neighbours in Western Europe, many aspects of epidemiology in Latin America are particular to that region. There are also distinctive theoretical and philosophical approaches to the study of epidemiology and public health arising from traditions such as the Latin American social medicine movement, of which there may be limited a...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - July 29, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: John R Williams, Annick Borquez and Maria Gloria Basanez Source Type: journals

Old and new cluster designs in emergency field surveys: in search of a one-fits-all solutionEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: Cluster designs discussed in this paper may offer substantial time and cost savings compared to the traditional 30 × 30 design, and may provide acceptable levels of precision when measuring outcomes that have high intracluster homogeneity. Further investigation is required to determine whether these designs can consistently provide accurate point estimates for key outcomes of interest. Organizations conducting cluster surveys in emergency settings need to build their technical capacity in survey design to be able to calculate context-specific sample sizes individually for each planned survey.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - July 8, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Oleg O Bilukha Source Type: journals

Precision, time, and cost: a comparison of three sampling designs in an emergency settingEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this study, we compare the precision, time and cost of the 30x30 cluster survey with two alternative sampling designs: a 33x6 cluster design (33 clusters, 6 observations per cluster) and a 67x3 cluster design (67 clusters, 3 observations per cluster). Data for each sampling design were collected concurrently in West Darfur, Sudan in September-October 2005 in an emergency setting. Results of the study show the 30x30 design to provide more precise results (i.e. narrower 95% confidence intervals) than the 33x6 and 67x3 design for most child-level indicators. Exceptions are indicators of immunization and vitamin A capsule s...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - May 2, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Megan Deitchler, Hedwig Deconinck and Gilles Bergeron Source Type: journals

The role of causal reasoning in understanding Simpson's paradox, Lord's paradox, and the suppression effect: covariate selection in the analysis of observational studiesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Tu et al present an analysis of the equivalence of three paradoxes, namely, Simpson's, Lord's, and the suppression phenomena. They conclude that all three simply reiterate the occurrence of a change in the association of any two variables when a third variable is statistically controlled for. This is not surprising because reversal or change in magnitude is common in conditional analysis. At the heart of the phenomenon of change in magnitude, with or without reversal of effect estimate, is the question of which to use: the unadjusted (combined table) or adjusted (sub-table) estimate. Hence, Simpson's paradox and related ph...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - February 26, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Onyebuchi A Arah Source Type: journals

Cars, corporations, and commodities: consequences for the social determinants of healthEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Social epidemiologists have drawn attention to health inequalities as avoidable and inequitable, encouraging thinking beyond proximal risk factors to the causes of the causes. However, key debates remain unresolved including the contribution of material and psychosocial pathways to health inequalities. Tools to operationalise social factors have not developed in tandem with conceptual frameworks, and research has often remained focused on the disadvantaged rather than on forces shaping population health across the distribution. Using the example of transport, we argue that closer attention to social processes (capital accu...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - February 21, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: James Woodcock and Rachel Aldred Source Type: journals

Issues in the construction of wealth indices for the measurement of socio-economic position in low-income countriesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: This study provides further doubt on the appropriateness of considering wealth indices as proxies for consumption expenditure. The choice of data included had a greater influence on the wealth index than the method used to weight the data. Despite the limitations of PCA, alternative methods also all had disadvantages, and there appears to be little reason to advocate the alternative weighting methods explored here.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - January 30, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Laura D Howe, James R Hargreaves and Sharon RA Huttly Source Type: journals

Simpsons Paradox, Lord's Paradox, and Suppression Effects are the same phenomenon - the reversal paradoxEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This article discusses three statistical paradoxes that pervade epidemiological research: Simpson's paradox, Lord's paradox, and suppression. These paradoxes have important implications for the interpretation of evidence from observational studies. This article uses hypothetical scenarios to illustrate how the three paradoxes are different manifestations of one phenomenon - the reversal paradox - depending on whether the outcome and explanatory variables are categorical, continuous or a combination of both; this renders the issues and remedies for any one to be similar for all three. Although the three statistical paradoxe...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - January 22, 2008 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Yu-Kang Tu, David J Gunnell and Mark S Gilthorpe Source Type: journals

Estimating the role of casual contact from the community in transmission of Bordetella pertussis to young infantsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study aimed to estimate the proportion of pertussis transmission due to casual contact using demographic and clinical data from a study of 95 infant pertussis cases and their close contacts enrolled at 14 hospitals in France, Germany, Canada, and the United States between February 2003 and September 2004. A complete case analysis was conducted, as well as multiple imputation (MI) analysis to account for missing data for participants and close contacts who did not participate. Using MI analysis (considering all possible close contacts), we estimated that 66% of source cases were close contacts, implying that the minimu...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - October 19, 2007 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Aaron M. Wendelboe, Michael G. Hudgens, Charles Poole and Annelies Van Rie Source Type: journals

Geographic variation and localised clustering of congenital anomalies in Great BritainEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusions: The variation in rates between registers and hospital catchment area may have resulted in part from differences in case ascertainment, and this should be taken into account in geographical epidemiological studies of environmental exposures. The absence of evidence for variation below this level should be interpreted cautiously in view of the low power of general heterogeneity tests. Nevertheless, the data suggest that strong localised clusters in congenital anomalies are uncommon, so clusters around specific putative environmental hazards are remarkable when observed. Negative binomial models applied at succes...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - July 6, 2007 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Ben G Armstrong, Helen Dolk, Sam Pattenden, Martine Vrijheid, Maria Loane, Judith Rankin, Chris Dunn, Chris Grundy, Lenore Abramsky, Patricia A Boyd, David Stone and Diana Wellesley Source Type: journals

Mortality and nutrition surveys by Non-Governmental organisations. Perspectives from the CE-DAT databaseEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In this paper we explore the strengths and gaps among NGO surveys based on an analysis of the records held in the CE-DAT database at CRED. We conclude by recommending the priority areas for strengthening NGO capacity to undertake surveys and ways to improve data quality in general.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - June 1, 2007 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Olivier Degomme and Debarati Guha-Sapir Source Type: journals

Sampling in health geography: reconciling geographical objectives and probabilistic methods. An example of a health survey in Vientiane (Lao PDR)Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: This paper describes the conceptual reasoning behind the construction of the survey sample and shows that it can be advantageous to choose clusters using reasoned hypotheses, based on both probability and geographical approaches, in contrast to a conventional, random cluster selection strategy.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - June 1, 2007 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Julie Vallée, Marc Souris, Florence Fournet, Audrey Bochaton, Virginie Mobillion, Karine Peyronnie and Gérard Salem Source Type: journals

Age standardisation - an indigenous standard?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The study of inequities in health is a critical component of monitoring government obligations to uphold the rights of Indigenous Peoples. In Aotearoa/New Zealand the indigenous Maori population has a substantially younger age structure than the non-indigenous population making it necessary to account for age differences when comparing population health outcomes. An age-standardised rate is a summary measure of a rate that a population would have if it had a standard age structure. Changing age standards have stimulated interest in the potential impact of population standards on disparities data and consequently on health ...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - May 14, 2007 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Bridget Robson, Gordon Purdie, Fiona Cram and Shirley Simmonds Source Type: journals

Risk factor studies of age-at-onset in a sample ascertained for Parkinson disease affected sibling pairs: a cautionary taleEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We describe how the results of age-at-onset studies of environmental risk factors reflect the underlying structure of the source population, rather than an association with age-at-onset, by contrasting the effects of coffee drinking and cigarette smoking on Parkinson disease age-at-onset with the effects on age-at-enrollment in a population based study sample. Despite earlier evidence to suggest a protective association of coffee drinking and cigarette smoking with Parkinson disease risk, the age-at-onset results are comparable to the patterns observed in the population sample, and thus a causal inference from the age-at-o...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - April 4, 2007 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Jemma B Wilk and Timothy L Lash Source Type: journals

The role of sexually transmitted infections in male circumcision effectiveness against HIV – insights from clinical trial simulationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: Estimation of efficacy, attributable fraction and effectiveness leads to improved understanding of trial results, gives trial results greater external validity and is essential to determine the broader public health impact of circumcision to men and women.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - December 22, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Kamal Desai, Marie-Claude Boily, Geoff P Garnett, Benoît R Mâsse, Stephen Moses and Robert C Bailey Source Type: journals

Pathways to health: a framework for health-focused research and practiceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Public health research and practice is faced with three problems: (1) a focus on disease instead of health, (2) consideration of risk factor/disease relationships one at a time, and (3) attention to individuals with limited regard for the communities in which they live. We propose a framework for health-focused research and practice. This framework encompasses individual and community pathways to health while incorporating the dynamics of context and overall population vulnerability and resilience. Individual pathways to health may differ, but commonalities will exist. By understanding these commonalities, communities can ...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - December 12, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Nancy L Fleischer, Ann M Weber, Susan Gruber, Karina Z Arambula, Maya Mascarenhas, Jessica A Frasure, Constance Wang and S. Leonard Syme Source Type: journals

Ethical issues in epidemiologic research and public health practiceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
A rich and growing body of literature has emerged on ethics in epidemiologic research and public health practice. Recent articles have included conceptual frameworks of public health ethics and overviews of historical developments in the field. Several important topics in public health ethics have also been highlighted. Attention to ethical issues can facilitate the effective planning, implementation, and growth of a variety of public health programs and research activities. Public health ethics is consistent with the prevention orientation of public health. Ethical concerns can be anticipated or identified early and effec...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - October 3, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Steven S Coughlin Source Type: journals

Migration and health: fact, fiction, art, politicsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
The recent Immigration Bill debate in the United States Congress has again re-ignited the polemic regarding immigration policy. In this essay, I argue that disputes surrounding the legality of migrant workers highlight chronic, underlying problems related to factors that drive migration. The public health field, although concerned primarily with addressing the health needs of migrant populations, cannot remain disengaged from the wider debates about migration. The health needs of migrants, although in themselves important, are merely symptoms of deeper structural process that are intrinsically linked to equity and human ri...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - October 2, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Clarence C Tam Source Type: journals

Individual freedom versus collective responsibility: too many rights make a wrong?Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Individuals might reasonably expect the freedom to make their own decisions regarding their health. However, what happens when an individual's wishes conflict with what is in that individual's best interests? How far should an individual's rights be restricted for his or her own benefit? Similarly, what limitations should be placed on an individual's behaviour when that person's wishes go against what is good for the population in general? Here we discuss the issues that can arise when the rights of individuals conflict with individual and population benefits in relation to infectious diseases.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - October 2, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Katharine J Looker and Timothy B Hallett Source Type: journals

Individual freedoms versus collective responsibility: immunization decision-making in the face of occasionally competing valuesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Modern public health strives for maximizing benefits for the highest number of people while protecting individual rights. Restrictions on individual rights are justified for two reasons - for the benefit of the individual or the benefit of the community. In extreme situations there may be a need to protect the health of an individual and particularly a child; even by overriding individual/parental autonomy. However, The American Academy of Pediatrics recently concluded that "Continued (vaccine) refusal after adequate discussion should be respected unless the child is put at significant risk of serious harm (as, for exampl...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 27, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Daniel A Salmon and Saad B Omer Source Type: journals

Individual freedom versus collective responsibility: an economic epidemiologyperspectiveEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Individuals' free choices in vaccination do not guarantee social optimum since individuals' decision is based on imperfect information, and vaccination decision involves positive externality. Public policy of compulsory vaccination or subsidised vaccination aims to increase aggregate private demand closer to social optimum. However, there is controversy over the effectiveness of public intervention compared to the free choice outcome in vaccination, and this article provides a brief discussion on this issue. It can be summarised that individuals incentives to vaccination and accordingly their behavioural responses can grea...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - September 26, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: M. Zia Sadique Source Type: journals

Mixing patterns and the spread of close-contact infectious diseasesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
This study aims to estimate the number of partnerships that individuals make, their stability and the degree to which mixing is assortative with respect to age. We defined four levels of putative at-risk events from casual (physical contact without conversation) to intimate (contact of a sexual nature), and asked university student volunteers to record details on those they contacted at these levels on three separate days. We found that intimate contacts are stable over short time periods whereas there was no evidence of repeat casual contacts with the same individuals. The contacts were increasingly assortative as intimac...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - August 14, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: W John Edmunds, George Kafatos, Jacco Wallinga and Joel Mossong Source Type: journals

Stochastic modeling of empirical time series of childhood infectious diseases data before and after mass vaccinationEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
We present an univariate time series analysis of pertussis, mumps, measles and rubella based on Box-Jenkins or ARIMA (autoregressive integrated moving average) modeling. The method, which allows to model the dependency structure embedded in the time series data, has potential research applications in a study of infectious disease dynamics. Canadian chronological series of pertussis, mumps, measles and rubella, before and after mass vaccination, are analyzed to characterize the statistical structure of these diseases. Despite the fact that these infectious diseases are biologically different, it is found that they all may b...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - August 8, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Helen Trottier, Pierre Philippe and Roch Roy Source Type: journals

Getting causal considerations back on the right trackEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
In their commentary on my paper Phillips and Goodman suggested that counterfactual causality and considerations on causality like those by Bradford Hill are only guideposts on the road to common sense. I argue that if common sense is understood to mean views that the vast majority of researchers share, Hills considerations did not lead to common sense in the past - precisely because they are so controversial. If common sense is taken to mean beliefs that are true, then Hills considerations can only lead to common sense in the simple causal systems they apply to. Counterfactuals, however, are largely common sense in the lat...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - July 19, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Michael Hofler Source Type: journals

Non-differential measurement error does not always bias diagnostic likelihood ratios towards the nullEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Diagnostic test evaluations are susceptible to random and systematic error. Simulated non-differential random error for six different error distributions was evaluated for its effect on measures of diagnostic accuracy for a brucellosis competitive ELISA. Test results were divided into four categories: =0.50 proportions inhibition for calculation of likelihood ratios and diagnostic odds ratios. Larger variance components of the error structure result in larger accuracy attenuations as measured by the area under the receiver-operating characteristic curve and systematic components appeared to cause little bias. Added error c...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - July 17, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Geoffrey T Fosgate Source Type: journals

Regression analysis with categorized regression calibrated exposure: Some interesting findings.Email this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusions: Regression calibration in its most well-known form is not appropriate for measurement error correction when the exposure is analyzed on a percentile scale. Relating back to the original scale of the exposure solves the problem. The conclusion regards all regression models.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - July 4, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Ingvild Dalen, John P Buonaccorsi, Petter Laake, Anette Hjartaker and Magne Thoresen Source Type: journals

Regression analysis with categorized regression calibrated exposure: some interesting findingsEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusions: Regression calibration in its most well-known form is not appropriate for measurement error correction when the exposure is analyzed on a percentile scale. Relating back to the original scale of the exposure solves the problem. The conclusion regards all regression models.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - July 4, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Ingvild Dalen, John P Buonaccorsi, Petter Laake, Anette Hjartaker and Magne Thoresen Source Type: journals

Causal criteria and counterfactuals; nothing more (or less) than scientific common senseEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Two persistent myths in epidemiology are that we can use a list of "causal criteria" to provide an algorithmic approach to inferring causation and that a modern "counterfactual model" can assist in the same endeavor. We argue that these are neither criteria nor a model, but that lists of causal considerations and formalizations of the counterfactual definition of causation are nevertheless useful tools for promoting scientific thinking. They set us on the path to the common sense of scientific inquiry, including testing hypotheses (really putting them to a test, not just calculating simplistic statistics), responding to th...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - May 26, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Carl V Phillips and Karen J Goodman Source Type: journals

Hospitalisation among immigrants in ItalyEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusions: The low hospitalisation rates for foreigners may suggest that they are a population with good health status. However, critical areas, related to poor living and working conditions and to social vulnerability, have been identified. Under-utilisation of services and low day care rates may be partially due to administrative, linguistic, and cultural barriers. As the presence of foreigners becomes an established phenomenon, it is important to evaluate their epidemiological profile, develop instruments to monitor and fulfil their specific health needs and plan health services for a multi-ethnic population.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - May 11, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Laura Cacciani, Giovanni Baglio, Lorenza Rossi, Enrico Materia, Maurizio Marceca, Salvatore Geraci, Angela Spinelli, John Osborn and Gabriella Guasticchi Source Type: journals

The basic principles of migration health: Population mobility and gaps in disease prevalenceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Currently, migrants and other mobile individuals, such as migrant workers and asylum seekers, are an expanding global population of growing social, demographic and political importance. Disparities often exist between a migrant populations place of origin and its destination, particularly with relation to health determinants. The effects of those disparities can be observed at both individual and population levels. Migration across health and disease disparities influences the epidemiology of certain diseases globally and in nations receiving migrants. While specific disease-based outcomes may vary between migrant group an...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - May 4, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Brian D Gushulak and Douglas W MacPherson Source Type: journals

Sib-recruitment for studying migration and its impact on obesity and diabetesEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusions: The sib-recruitment design is robust and has been adopted in the main study. It is possible that simple urban-rural study designs under-estimate the true differences in diabetes risk between migrants and non-migrants.
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - March 13, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Tanica Lyngdoh, Sanjay Kinra, Yoav Ben Shlomo, Srinath Reddy, Dorairaj Prabhakaran, George Davey Smith and Shah Ebrahim Source Type: journals

Two Surgeon General's reports on smoking and cancer: a historical investigation of the practice of causal inferenceEmail this article to a colleague. Save this article to My Clippings. Discuss or comment on this article.
Conclusion: Our findings suggest that the causal criteria as described in textbooks and the Surgeon General reports can have variable interpretations and applications in practice. While the authors of these reports may have considered evidential factors that they did not explicitly cite, such lack of transparency of methods undermines the purpose of the causal criteria to promote objective, evidence-based decision making. Further empirical study and critical examination of the process by which causal conclusions are reached can play an important role in advancing the practice of epidemiology by helping public health scient...
Source: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology - January 10, 2006 Category: Epidemiology Authors: Mark Parascandola, Douglas L Weed and Abhijit Dasgupta Source Type: journals