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, ...
Authors: Anders Huitfeldt, Mats J. Stensrud and Etsuji Suzuki
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2019
16:1
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...
Authors: Laura A. Schieve, Shericka Harris, Matthew J. Maenner, Aimee Alexander and Nicole F. Dowling
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:12
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...
Authors: Stephen Nash, Victoria Tittle, Andrew Abaasa, Richard E. Sanya, Gershim Asiki, Christian Holm Hansen, Heiner Grosskurth, Saidi Kapiga and Chris Grundy
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:11
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...
Authors: C. Mary Schooling and Heidi E. Jones
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:10
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...
Authors: Lawrence M. Paul
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:9
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...
Authors: Emmanuel Grellety and Michael H. Golden
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:8
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...
Authors: Marissa Becker, Sharmistha Mishra, Sevgi Aral, Parinita Bhattacharjee, Rob Lorway, Kalada Green, John Anthony, Shajy Isac, Faran Emmanuel, Helgar Musyoki, Lisa Lazarus, Laura H. Thompson, Eve Cheuk and James F. Blanchard
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:7
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...
Authors: Miguel Marino and Marcello Pagano
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:6
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...
Authors: Robert W. Eyre, Thomas House, F. Xavier Gómez-Olivé and Frances E. Griffiths
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:5
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...
Authors: Matthew R. Grigsby, Junrui Di, Andrew Leroux, Vadim Zipunnikov, Luo Xiao, Ciprian Crainiceanu and William Checkley
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:4
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...
Authors: Nandita Perumal, Daniel E. Roth, Johnna Perdrizet, Aluísio J. D. Barros, Iná S. Santos, Alicia Matijasevich and Diego G. Bassani
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:3
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...
Authors: Kate Sabot, Tanya Marchant, Neil Spicer, Della Berhanu, Meenakshi Gautham, Nasir Umar and Joanna Schellenberg
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:2
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...
Authors: Mette Lise Lousdal
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2018
15:1
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...
Authors: R. P. Cornish, J. Macleod, J. R. Carpenter and K. Tilling
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:14
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...
Authors: Dan Li, Ruth Keogh, John P. Clancy and Rhonda D. Szczesniak
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:13
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 ...
Authors: Christopher Jarvis, Gian Luca Di Tanna, Daniel Lewis, Neal Alexander and W. John Edmunds
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:12
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...
Authors: Ashwini Venkatasubramaniam, Julian Wolfson, Nathan Mitchell, Timothy Barnes, Meghan JaKa and Simone French
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:11
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...
Authors: Swati DebRoy, Olivia Prosper, Austin Mishoe and Anuj Mubayi
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:10
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...
Authors: Wolf-Peter Schmidt
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:9
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...
Authors: Cattram D. Nguyen, John B. Carlin and Katherine J. Lee
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:8
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...
Authors: Paolo Vineis, Phyllis Illari and Federica Russo
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:7
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...
Authors: Tomohiro Shinozaki, Mohammad Ali Mansournia and Yutaka Matsuyama
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:6
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...
Authors: Jin-Xi Yuan, Marian McGowan, Irene Hadjikoumi and Buddhi Pant
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:5
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...
Authors: Nicole Rübsamen, Manas K. Akmatov, Stefanie Castell, André Karch and Rafael T. Mikolajczyk
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:4
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...
Authors: Michael Waller, Gita D. Mishra and Annette J. Dobson
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:3
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...
Authors: Mario Bach, Susanne Jordan, Susanne Hartung, Claudia Santos-Hövener and Michael T. Wright
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:2
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...
Authors: Jamie M. Madden, Xia Li, Patricia M. Kearney, Kate Tilling and Anthony P. Fitzgerald
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2017
14:1
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...
Authors: Erin N. Hulland, Curtis J. Blanton, Eva Z. Leidman and Oleg O. Bilukha
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:13
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...
Authors: Mathias Altmann, Christophe Fermanian, Boshen Jiao, Chiara Altare, Martin Loada and Mark Myatt
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:12
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...
Authors: Anna Brown, Oksana Kirichek, Angela Balkwill, Gillian Reeves, Valerie Beral, Cathie Sudlow, John Gallacher and Jane Green
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:11
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...
Authors: Laith Hussain-Alkhateeb, Max Petzold, Mark Collinson, Stephen Tollman, Kathleen Kahn and Peter Byass
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:10
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 ...
Authors: Daniel A. Sprague, Caroline Jeffery, Nadine Crossland, Thomas House, Gareth O. Roberts, William Vargas, Joseph Ouma, Stephen K. Lwanga and Joseph J. Valadez
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:9
Dichotomisation of continuous data has statistical drawbacks such as loss of power but may be useful in epidemiological research to define high risk individuals.
Authors: Odile Sauzet, Jürgen Breckenkamp, Theda Borde, Silke Brenne, Matthias David, Oliver Razum and Janet L. Peacock
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:8
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...
Authors: Severine Frison, Francesco Checchi, Marko Kerac and Jennifer Nicholas
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:7
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.
Authors: Adrian Bauman, Philayrath Phongsavan, Alison Cowle, Emily Banks, Louisa Jorm, Kris Rogers, Bin Jalaludin and Anne Grunseit
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:6
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...
Authors: Hiraku Kumamaru, Sebastian Schneeweiss, Robert J. Glynn, Soko Setoguchi and Joshua J. Gagne
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:5
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...
Authors: Veronica Tuffrey and Andrew Hall
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:4
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...
Authors: Amelia Catharine Crampin, Ndoliwe Kayuni, Alemayehu Amberbir, Crispin Musicha, Olivier Koole, Terence Tafatatha, Keith Branson, Jacqueline Saul, Elenaus Mwaiyeghele, Lawrence Nkhwazi, Amos Phiri, Alison Jane Price, Beatrice Mwagomba, Charles Mwansambo, Shabbar Jaffar and Moffat Joha Nyirenda
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:3
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...
Authors: Lara R. Dugas, Miles Fuller, Jack Gilbert and Brian T. Layden
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:2
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...
Authors: Laura M. Grajeda, Andrada Ivanescu, Mayuko Saito, Ciprian Crainiceanu, Devan Jaganath, Robert H. Gilman, Jean E. Crabtree, Dermott Kelleher, Lilia Cabrera, Vitaliano Cama and William Checkley
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2016
13:1
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...
Authors: Marco J. Haenssgen
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2015
12:20
Epidemiological analyses of aggregated data are often used to evaluate theoretical health effects of natural disasters. Such analyses are susceptible
to confounding by unmeasured differences between the expos...
Authors: Shannon C. Grabich, Whitney R. Robinson, Stephanie M. Engel, Charles E. Konrad, David B. Richardson and Jennifer A. Horney
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2015
12:19
Epidemiologists have debated the appropriate time-scale for cohort survival studies; chronological age or time-on-study being two such time-scales. Importantly, assessment of risk factors may depend on the cho...
Authors: Margaret Anne Hurley
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2015
12:18
A subgroup of individuals becomes entrenched in a “revolving door” involving corrections, health, and social welfare services. Little research has investigated the numbers of people that are in frequent contac...
Authors: Julian M. Somers, Stefanie N. Rezansoff, Akm Moniruzzaman and Carmen Zabarauckas
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2015
12:17
China’s growing population of internal migrants has exceeded 236 million. Driven by rapid development and urbanization, this extreme population mobility creates opportunities for transmission of HIV and sexual...
Authors: Joshua B. Mendelsohn, Liviana Calzavara, Lucia Light, Ann N. Burchell, Jinma Ren and Laiyi Kang
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2015
12:16
Hantavirus infection is an emerging zoonosis transmitted by wild rodents. In Brazil, high case-fatality rates among humans infected with hantavirus are of serious concern to public health authorities. Appropri...
Authors: Stefan Vilges de Oliveira, Lidsy Ximenes Fonseca, Keline Medeiros de Araújo Vilges, Fernanda Voietta Pinna Maniglia, Simone Valéria Costa Pereira, Eduardo Pacheco de Caldas, Pedro Luiz Tauil and Rodrigo Gurgel-Gonçalves
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2015
12:15
In 1965, Sir Austin Bradford Hill published nine “viewpoints” to help determine if observed epidemiologic associations are causal. Since then, the “Bradford Hill Criteria” have become the most frequently cited...
Authors: Kristen M. Fedak, Autumn Bernal, Zachary A. Capshaw and Sherilyn Gross
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2015
12:14
The importance of studying associations between socio-economic position and health has often been highlighted. Previous studies have linked the prevalence and severity of lung disease with national wealth and ...
Authors: John Townend, Cosetta Minelli, Imed Harrabi, Daniel O. Obaseki, Karima El-Rhazi, Jaymini Patel and Peter Burney
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2015
12:13
Specialised sexually transmitted infection (STI) clinics in the Netherlands provide STI care for high-risk groups, including female sex workers (FSW), at the clinic and by outreach visiting commercial sex work...
Authors: Maud M. A. Verscheijden, Petra J. Woestenberg, Hannelore M. Götz, Maaike G. van Veen, Femke D. H. Koedijk and Birgit H. B. van Benthem
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2015
12:12
Statistical inference is commonly said to be inapplicable to complete population studies, such as censuses, due to the absence of sampling variability. Nevertheless, in recent years, studies of whole populatio...
Authors: Neal Alexander
Citation:Emerging Themes in Epidemiology
2015
12:11