Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2021 18:2
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Mitigation of biases in estimating hazard ratios under non-sensitive and non-specific observation of outcomes–applications to influenza vaccine effectiveness
Non-sensitive and non-specific observation of outcomes in time-to-event data affects event counts as well as the risk sets, thus, biasing the estimation of hazard ratios. We investigate how imperfect observati...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2021 18:1
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Comparing methods of performing geographically targeted rural health surveillance
Worsening socioeconomic conditions in rural America have been fueling increases in chronic disease and poor health. The goal of this study was to identify cost-effective methods of deploying geographically tar...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2020 17:3
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Latent class instrumental variables and the monotonicity assumption
A key aspect of the article by Lousdal on instrumental variables was a discussion of the monotonicity assumption. However, there was no mention of the history of the development of this assumption. The purpose...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2020 17:2
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Response to: Simpson’s Paradox is suppression, but Lord’s Paradox is neither: clarification of and correction to Tu, Gunnell, and Gilthorpe (2008) by Nickerson CA & Brown NJL (https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-7622-5-2)
We commend Nickerson and Brown on their insightful exposition of the mathematical algebra behind Simpson’s paradox, suppression and Lord’s paradox; we also acknowledge there can be differences in how Lord’s pa...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2020 17:1
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Simpson’s Paradox is suppression, but Lord’s Paradox is neither: clarification of and correction to Tu, Gunnell, and Gilthorpe (2008)
Tu et al. (Emerg Themes Epidemiol 5:2, 2008. https://doi.org/10.1186/1742-7622-5-2) asserted that suppression, Simpson’s Paradox, and Lord’s Paradox are all the same phenomenon—the reversal paradox. In the revers...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2019 16:5
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Prediction or interpretability?
The journal published a review of the literature on recursive partition in epidemiological research comparing two decision tree methods: classification and regression trees (CARTs) and conditional inference tr...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2019 16:4
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Health monitoring among asylum seekers and refugees: a state-wide, cross-sectional, population-based study in Germany
Health monitoring in Germany falls short on generating timely, reliable and representative data among migrants, especially transient and marginalized groups such as asylum seekers and refugees (ASR). We aim to...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2019 16:3
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(Re-) conceptualising vulnerability as a part of risk in global health emergency response: updating the pressure and release model for global health emergencies
Vulnerability has become a key concept in emergency response research and is being critically discussed across several disciplines. While the concept has been adopted into global health, its conceptualisation ...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2019 16:2
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On the collapsibility of measures of effect in the counterfactual causal framework
The relationship between collapsibility and confounding has been subject to an extensive and ongoing discussion in the methodological literature. We discuss two subtly different definitions of collapsibility, ...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2019 16:1
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Assessment of demographic and perinatal predictors of non-response and impact of non-response on measures of association in a population-based case control study: findings from the Georgia Study to Explore Early Development
Participation in epidemiologic studies has declined, raising concerns about selection bias. While estimates derived from epidemiologic studies have been shown to be robust under a wide range of scenarios, addi...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:12
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The validity of an area-based method to estimate the size of hard-to-reach populations using satellite images: the example of fishing populations of Lake Victoria
Information on the size of populations is crucial for planning of service and resource allocation to communities in need of health interventions. In resource limited settings, reliable census data are often no...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:11
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Clarifying questions about “risk factors”: predictors versus explanation
In biomedical research much effort is thought to be wasted. Recommendations for improvement have largely focused on processes and procedures. Here, we additionally suggest less ambiguity concerning the questio...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:10
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Cannons and sparrows: an exact maximum likelihood non-parametric test for meta-analysis of k 2 × 2 tables
The use of meta-analysis to aggregate multiple studies has increased dramatically over the last 30 years. For meta-analysis of homogeneous data where the effect sizes for the studies contributing to the meta-a...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:9
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Change in quality of malnutrition surveys between 1986 and 2015
Representative surveys collecting weight, height and MUAC are used to estimate the prevalence of acute malnutrition. The results are then used to assess the scale of malnutrition in a population and type of nu...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:8
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The contributions and future direction of Program Science in HIV/STI prevention
Program Science is an iterative, multi-phase research and program framework where programs drive the scientific inquiry, and both program and science are aligned towards a collective goal of improving populati...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:7
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Role of survey response rates on valid inference: an application to HIV prevalence estimates
Nationally-representative surveys suggest that females have a higher prevalence of HIV than males in most African countries. Unfortunately, these results are made on the basis of surveys with non-ignorable mi...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:6
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Modelling fertility in rural South Africa with combined nonlinear parametric and semi-parametric methods
Central to the study of populations, and therefore to the analysis of the development of countries undergoing major transitions, is the calculation of fertility patterns and their dependence on different varia...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:5
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Novel metrics for growth model selection
Literature surrounding the statistical modeling of childhood growth data involves a diverse set of potential models from which investigators can choose. However, the lack of a comprehensive framework for compa...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:4
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Effect of correcting for gestational age at birth on population prevalence of early childhood undernutrition
Postmenstrual and/or gestational age-corrected age (CA) is required to apply child growth standards to children born preterm (< 37 weeks gestational age). Yet, CA is rarely used in epidemiologic studies in low...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:3
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Contextual factors in maternal and newborn health evaluation: a protocol applied in Nigeria, India and Ethiopia
Understanding the context of a health programme is important in interpreting evaluation findings and in considering the external validity for other settings. Public health researchers can be imprecise and inco...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:2
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An introduction to instrumental variable assumptions, validation and estimation
The instrumental variable method has been employed within economics to infer causality in the presence of unmeasured confounding. Emphasising the parallels to randomisation may increase understanding of the un...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2018 15:1
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Multiple imputation using linked proxy outcome data resulted in important bias reduction and efficiency gains: a simulation study
When an outcome variable is missing not at random (MNAR: probability of missingness depends on outcome values), estimates of the effect of an exposure on this outcome are often biased. We investigated the exte...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:14
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Flexible semiparametric joint modeling: an application to estimate individual lung function decline and risk of pulmonary exacerbations in cystic fibrosis
Epidemiologic surveillance of lung function is key to clinical care of individuals with cystic fibrosis, but lung function decline is nonlinear and often impacted by acute respiratory events known as pulmonary...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:13
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Spatial analysis of cluster randomised trials: a systematic review of analysis methods
Cluster randomised trials (CRTs) often use geographical areas as the unit of randomisation, however explicit consideration of the location and spatial distribution of observations is rare. In many trials, the ...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:12
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Decision trees in epidemiological research
In many studies, it is of interest to identify population subgroups that are relatively homogeneous with respect to an outcome. The nature of these subgroups can provide insight into effect mechanisms and sugg...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:11
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Challenges in modeling complexity of neglected tropical diseases: a review of dynamics of visceral leishmaniasis in resource limited settings
Neglected tropical diseases (NTD), account for a large proportion of the global disease burden, and their control faces several challenges including diminishing human and financial resources for those distress...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:10
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Randomised and non-randomised studies to estimate the effect of community-level public health interventions: definitions and methodological considerations
The preferred method to evaluate public health interventions delivered at the level of whole communities is the cluster randomised trial (CRT). The practical limitations of CRTs and the need for alternative me...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:9
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Model checking in multiple imputation: an overview and case study
Multiple imputation has become very popular as a general-purpose method for handling missing data. The validity of multiple-imputation-based analyses relies on the use of an appropriate model to impute the mis...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:8
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Causality in cancer research: a journey through models in molecular epidemiology and their philosophical interpretation
In the last decades, Systems Biology (including cancer research) has been driven by technology, statistical modelling and bioinformatics. In this paper we try to bring biological and philosophical thinking ba...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:7
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On hazard ratio estimators by proportional hazards models in matched-pair cohort studies
In matched-pair cohort studies with censored events, the hazard ratio (HR) may be of main interest. However, it is lesser known in epidemiologic literature that the partial maximum likelihood estimator of a co...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:6
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Do children with neurological disabilities use more inpatient resources: an observational study
Advances in healthcare have improved the survival of children with neurological disabilities (ND). Studies in the US have shown that children with ND use a substantial proportion of resources in children’s hos...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:5
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Comparison of response patterns in different survey designs: a longitudinal panel with mixed-mode and online-only design
Increasing availability of the Internet allows using only online data collection for more epidemiological studies. We compare response patterns in a population-based health survey using two survey designs: mix...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:4
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Estimating the prevalence of dementia using multiple linked administrative health records and capture–recapture methodology
Obtaining population-level estimates of the incidence and prevalence of dementia is challenging due to under-diagnosis and under-reporting. We investigated the feasibility of using multiple linked datasets and...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:3
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Participatory epidemiology: the contribution of participatory research to epidemiology
Epidemiology has contributed in many ways to identifying various risk factors for disease and to promoting population health. However, there is a continuing debate about the ability of epidemiology not only to...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:2
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Exploring diurnal variation using piecewise linear splines: an example using blood pressure
There are many examples of physiological processes that follow a circadian cycle and researchers are interested in alternative methods to illustrate and quantify this diurnal variation. Circadian blood pressur...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2017 14:1
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Parameters associated with design effect of child anthropometry indicators in small-scale field surveys
Cluster surveys provide rapid but representative estimates of key nutrition indicators in humanitarian crises. For these surveys, an accurate estimate of the design effect is critical to calculate a sample siz...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:13
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Nutrition surveillance using a small open cohort: experience from Burkina Faso
Nutritional surveillance remains generally weak and early warning systems are needed in areas with high burden of acute under-nutrition. In order to enhance insight into nutritional surveillance, a community-b...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:12
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Comparison of dementia recorded in routinely collected hospital admission data in England with dementia recorded in primary care
Electronic linkage of UK cohorts to routinely collected National Health Service (NHS) records provides virtually complete follow-up for cause-specific hospital admissions and deaths. The reliability of dementi...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:11
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Effects of recall time on cause-of-death findings using verbal autopsy: empirical evidence from rural South Africa
Verbal autopsy (VA) is a widely used technique for assigning causes to non-medically certified deaths using information gathered from a close caregiver. Both operational and cultural factors may cause delays i...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:10
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Assessing delivery practices of mothers over time and over space in Uganda, 2003–2012
It is well known that safe delivery in a health facility reduces the risks of maternal and infant mortality resulting from perinatal complications. What is less understood are the factors associated with safe ...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:9
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A distributional approach to obtain adjusted comparisons of proportions of a population at risk
Dichotomisation of continuous data has statistical drawbacks such as loss of power but may be useful in epidemiological research to define high risk individuals.
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:8
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Is Middle-Upper Arm Circumference “normally” distributed? Secondary data analysis of 852 nutrition surveys
Wasting is a major public health issue throughout the developing world. Out of the 6.9 million estimated deaths among children under five annually, over 800,000 deaths (11.6 %) are attributed to wasting. Wasti...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:7
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Maximising follow-up participation rates in a large scale 45 and Up Study in Australia
The issue of poor response rates to population surveys has existed for some decades, but few studies have explored methods to improve the response rate in follow-up population cohort studies.
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:6
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Dimension reduction and shrinkage methods for high dimensional disease risk scores in historical data
Multivariable confounder adjustment in comparative studies of newly marketed drugs can be limited by small numbers of exposed patients and even fewer outcomes. Disease risk scores (DRSs) developed in historica...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:5
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Methods of nutrition surveillance in low-income countries
In 1974 a joint FAO/UNICEF/WHO Expert Committee met to develop methods for nutrition surveillance. There has been much interest and activity in this topic since then, however there is a lack of guidance for pr...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:4
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Hypertension and diabetes in Africa: design and implementation of a large population-based study of burden and risk factors in rural and urban Malawi
The emerging burden of cardiovascular disease and diabetes in sub-Saharan Africa threatens the gains made in health by the major international effort to combat infectious diseases. There are few data on distri...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:3
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The obese gut microbiome across the epidemiologic transition
The obesity epidemic has emerged over the past few decades and is thought to be a result of both genetic and environmental factors. A newly identified factor, the gut microbiota, which is a bacterial ecosystem...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:2
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Modelling subject-specific childhood growth using linear mixed-effect models with cubic regression splines
Childhood growth is a cornerstone of pediatric research. Statistical models need to consider individual trajectories to adequately describe growth outcomes. Specifically, well-defined longitudinal models are e...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2016 13:1
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Satellite-aided survey sampling and implementation in low- and middle-income contexts: a low-cost/low-tech alternative
The increasing availability of online maps, satellite imagery, and digital technology can ease common constraints of survey sampling in low- and middle-income countries. However, existing approaches require sp...
Citation: Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2015 12:20
- ISSN: 1742-7622 (electronic)