Articles

Estimating completeness of national and subnational death reporting in Brazil: application of record linkage methods

In Brazil, both the Civil Registry (CR) and Ministry of Health (MoH) Mortality Information System (SIM) are sources of routine mortality data, but neither is 100% complete. Deaths from these two sources can be...

Authors: Luiz Fernando Lima Costa, Marli de Mesquita Silva Montenegro, Dacio de Lyra Rabello Neto, Antonio Tadeu Ribeiro de Oliveira, Jose Eduardo de Oliveira Trindade, Tim Adair and Maria de Fatima Marinho

The cross-sectional average length of healthy life (HCAL): a measure that summarizes the history of cohort health and mortality

Healthy life years have superseded life expectancy (LE) as the most important indicator for population health. The most common approach to separate the total number of life years into those spent in good and p...

Authors: Markus Sauerberg, Michel Guillot and Marc Luy

Estimating the number and length of episodes in disability using a Markov chain approach

Markov models are a key tool for calculating expected time spent in a state, such as active life expectancy and disabled life expectancy. In reality, individuals often enter and exit states recurrently, but st...

Authors: Christian Dudel and Mikko Myrskylä

Comparison of three small-area mortality metrics according to urbanity in Korea: the standardized mortality ratio, comparative mortality figure, and life expectancy

This study aimed to compare three small-area level mortality metrics according to urbanity in Korea: the standardized mortality ratio (SMR), comparative mortality figure (CMF), and life expectancy (LE) by urba...

Authors: Ikhan Kim, Hwa-Kyung Lim, Hee-Yeon Kang and Young-Ho Khang

Population Health Metrics: the next phase

Authors: Jonathan M. Samet, Christopher J. L. Murray and Alan D. Lopez

Reweighting national survey data for small area behaviour estimates: modelling alcohol consumption in Local Authorities in England

There are likely to be differences in alcohol consumption levels and patterns across local areas within a country, yet survey data is often collected at the national or sub-national/regional level and is not r...

Authors: Robert Pryce, Colin Angus, John Holmes, Duncan Gillespie, Penny Buykx, Petra Meier, Matt Hickman, Frank de Vocht and Alan Brennan

Preventing type 2 diabetes mellitus in Qatar by reducing obesity, smoking, and physical inactivity: mathematical modeling analyses

The aim of this study was to estimate the impact of reducing the prevalence of obesity, smoking, and physical inactivity, and introducing physical activity as an explicit intervention, on the burden of type 2 ...

Authors: Susanne F. Awad, Martin O’Flaherty, Katie G. El-Nahas, Abdulla O. Al-Hamaq, Julia A. Critchley and Laith J. Abu-Raddad

Accounting for biases in survey-based estimates of population attributable fractions

This paper discusses best practices for estimating fractions of mortality attributable to health exposures in survey data that are biased by observed confounders and unobserved endogenous selection. Extant res...

Authors: Ryan Masters and Eric Reither

Social capital is associated with lower mosquito vector indices: secondary analysis from a cluster randomised controlled trial of community mobilisation for dengue prevention in Mexico

Control of the Aedes aegypti mosquito is central to reducing the risk of dengue, zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever. Randomised controlled trials, including the Camino Verde trial in Mexico and Nicaragua, demons...

Authors: Víctor Alvarado-Castro, Sergio Paredes-Solís, Elizabeth Nava-Aguilera, Arcadio Morales-Pérez, Miguel Flores-Moreno, José Legorreta-Soberanis, Esmeralda Jaimes-Néstor, Anne Cockcroft and Neil Andersson

Prevalence, determinants and association of unawareness of diabetes, hypertension and hypercholesterolemia with poor disease control in a multi-ethnic Asian population without cardiovascular disease

To explore the prevalence and determinants of unawareness of diabetes, hypertension and hypercholesterolemia and its association with poor disease control in a multi-ethnic Asian population without cardiovascu...

Authors: Ryan E. K. Man, Alvin Hong Wei Gan, Eva K. Fenwick, Alfred Tau Liang Gan, Preeti Gupta, Charumathi Sabanayagam, Nicholas Tan, Kah Hie Wong, Tien Yin Wong, Ching-Yu Cheng and Ecosse L. Lamoureux

A comparative analysis of disability measures in Cameroonian surveys

Although identifying vulnerable groups is an important step in shaping appropriate and efficient policies for targeting populations of disabled people, it remains a challenge. This study aims to evaluate for t...

Authors: Arlette Simo Fotso, Géraldine Duthé and Clifford Odimegwu

The relationship between the different low birth weight strata of newborns with infant mortality and the influence of the main health determinants in the extreme south of Brazil

Low birth weight (LBW) newborns present different health outcomes when classified in different birth weight strata. This study evaluated the relationship of birth weight with Infant mortality (IM) through the ...

Authors: Cássia Simeão Vilanova, Vânia Naomi Hirakata, Viviane Costa de Souza Buriol, Marina Nunes, Marcelo Zubaran Goldani and Clécio Homrich da Silva

Migrant health in Italy: a better health status difficult to maintain—country of origin and assimilation effects studied from the Italian risk factor surveillance data

Many studies on migrant health have focused on aspects of morbidity and mortality, but very few approach the relevant issues of migrants’ health considering behavioral risk factors. Previous studies have often...

Authors: Stefano Campostrini, Giuliano Carrozzi, Santino Severoni, Maria Masocco and Stefania Salmaso

Adjusting selection bias in German health insurance records for regional prevalence estimation

Regional prevalence estimation requires epidemiologic data with substantial local detail. National health surveys may lack in sufficient local observations due to limited resources. Therefore, corresponding pr...

Authors: Ralf Thomas Münnich, Jan Pablo Burgard and Joscha Krause

Evidence on the magnitude of the economic, health and population effects of palm cooking oil consumption: an integrated modelling approach with Thailand as a case study

Palm oil’s high yields, consequent low cost and highly versatile properties as a cooking oil and food ingredient have resulted in its thorough infiltration of the food sector in some countries. Longitudinal st...

Authors: Marcus R. Keogh-Brown, Henning Tarp Jensen, Sanjay Basu, Wichai Aekplakorn, Soledad Cuevas, Alan D. Dangour, Shabbir H. Gheewala, Rosemary Green, Edward JM Joy, Nipa Rojroongwasinkul, Nalitra Thaiprasert, Bhavani Shankar and Richard D. Smith

Evaluation of data availability on population health indicators at the regional level across the European Union

The ability to measure regional health inequalities across Europe and to build adequate population health indices depends significantly on the availability of reliable and comparable data at the regional level...

Authors: Claudia Costa, Ângela Freitas, Iwa Stefanik, Thomas Krafft, Eva Pilot, Joana Morrison and Paula Santana

Can cost-effectiveness results be combined into a coherent league table? Case study from one high-income country

Doubts exist around the value of compiling league tables for cost-effectiveness results for health interventions, primarily due to methods differences. We aimed to determine if a reasonably coherent league tab...

Authors: Nick Wilson, Anna Davies, Naomi Brewer, Nhung Nghiem, Linda Cobiac and Tony Blakely

Regional variation of premature mortality in Ontario, Canada: a spatial analysis

Premature mortality is a meaningful indicator of both population health and health system performance, which varies by geography in Ontario. We used the Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) sub-regions to c...

Authors: Emmalin Buajitti, Tristan Watson, Todd Norwood, Kathy Kornas, Catherine Bornbaum, David Henry and Laura C. Rosella

Estimating cause-specific mortality in Madagascar: an evaluation of death notification data from the capital city

Trends in cause-specific mortality in most African countries are currently estimated from epidemiological models because the coverage of the civil registration system is low and national statistics on causes o...

Authors: Bruno Masquelier, Gilles Pison, Julio Rakotonirina and Anjarasoa Rasoanomenjanahary

Probabilistic walking models using built environment and sociodemographic predictors

Individual sociodemographic and home neighborhood built environment (BE) factors influence the probability of engaging in health-enhancing levels of walking or moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA). Me...

Authors: Anne Vernez Moudon, Ruizhu Huang, Orion T. Stewart, Hannah Cohen-Cline, Carolyn Noonan, Philip M. Hurvitz and Glen E. Duncan

Examining trends in cardiovascular disease mortality across Europe: how does the introduction of a new European Standard Population affect the description of the relative burden of cardiovascular disease?

Some mortality statistics are misleading when comparing between countries due to varying age distributions in their populations. In order to adjust for these differences, age-standardised mortality rates (ASMR...

Authors: Shiva Tadayon, Kremlin Wickramasinghe and Nick Townsend

Correction to: Evaluation of the mortality registry in Ecuador (2001–2013) – social and geographical inequalities in completeness and quality

Following the publication of this article [1], the authors reported a typesetting error in Table 1 that caused the columns of the table to be ordered incorrectly, and a typographical error in a sentence in the...

Authors: Andrés Peralta, Joan Benach, Carme Borrell, Verónica Espinel-Flores, Lucinda Cash-Gibson, Bernardo L. Queiroz and Marc Marí-Dell’Olmo

Estimating Adult Mortality in Papua New Guinea, 2011

Mortality in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is poorly measured because routine reporting of deaths is incomplete and inaccurate. This study provides the first estimates in the academic literature of adult mortality (4...

Authors: Urarang Kitur, Tim Adair and Alan D. Lopez

Evaluation of the mortality registry in Ecuador (2001–2013) – social and geographical inequalities in completeness and quality

Mortality registries are an essential data source for public health surveillance and for planning and evaluating public policy. Nevertheless, there are still large inequalities in the completeness and quality ...

Authors: Andrés Peralta, Joan Benach, Carme Borrell, Verónica Espinel-Flores, Lucinda Cash-Gibson, Bernardo L. Queiroz and Marc Marí-Dell’Olmo

Cause of death coding in Switzerland: evaluation based on a nationwide individual linkage of mortality and hospital in-patient records

Cause of death statistics are an important tool for quality control of the health care system. Their reliability, however, is controversial. Comparing death certificates with their corresponding medical record...

Authors: Ueli Zellweger, Christoph Junker and Matthias Bopp

Potential gains in health expectancy by improving lifestyle: an application for European regions

Prevention aiming at smoking, alcohol consumption, and BMI could potentially bring large gains in life expectancy (LE) and health expectancy measures such as Healthy Life Years (HLY) and Life Expectancy in Goo...

Authors: Koen Füssenich, Wilma J. Nusselder, Stefan K. Lhachimi, Hendriek C. Boshuizen and Talitha F. Feenstra

Assessing the quality of medical death certification: a case study of concordance between national statistics and results from a medical record review in a regional hospital in the Philippines

Medical certificates of cause of death (MCCOD) issued by hospital physicians are a key input to vital registration systems. Deaths certified by hospital physicians have been implicitly considered to be of high...

Authors: Marilla Lucero, Ian Douglas Riley, Riley H. Hazard, Diozele Sanvictores, Veronica Tallo, Dorothy Gay Marmita Dumaluan, Juanita M. Ugpo and Alan D. Lopez

Health status in a transitional society: urban-rural disparities from a dynamic perspective in China

The phenomenon of urban-rural segmentation has emerged and is remarkable, and the health disparities between rural and urban China should be stressed.

Authors: Junfeng Jiang and Peigang Wang

How useful are registered birth statistics for health and social policy? A global systematic assessment of the availability and quality of birth registration data

The registration and certification of births has a wide array of individual and societal benefits. While near-universal in some parts of the world, birth registration is less common in many low- and middle-inc...

Authors: David E. Phillips, Tim Adair and Alan D. Lopez

Injury death certificates without specification of the circumstances leading to the fatal injury – the Norwegian Cause of Death Registry 2005–2014

For injury deaths, the underlying cause of death is defined as the circumstances leading to the injury. When this information is missing, the ICD-10 code X59 (Exposure to unspecified factor) is used. Lack of k...

Authors: Christian Lycke Ellingsen, Marta Ebbing, G. Cecilie Alfsen and Stein Emil Vollset

Evaluation of stability of directly standardized rates for sparse data using simulation methods

Directly standardized rates (DSRs) adjust for different age distributions in different populations and enable, say, the rates of disease between the populations to be directly compared. They are routinely publ...

Authors: Joan K. Morris, Joachim Tan, Paul Fryers and Jonathan Bestwick

Quantifying temporal trends of age-standardized rates with odds

To quantify temporal trends in age-standardized rates of disease, the convention is to fit a linear regression model to log-transformed rates because the slope term provides the estimated annual percentage cha...

Authors: Chuen Seng Tan, Nathalie Støer, Yilin Ning, Ying Chen and Marie Reilly

The present and future burden of previously treated advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) by histology and line of therapy in France, Germany, Italy, and Spain: model-based predictions

The burden of advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is not well understood, and the number of patients likely to receive treatment in Europe has not been quantified. The aim of this study was to forecast...

Authors: David Campbell, Ken O’Day, Nadine Hertel, John R. Penrod, Melinda Manley Daumont and Michael Lees

Hospital mortality statistics in Tanzania: availability, accessibility, and quality 2006–2015

Accurate and reliable hospital information on the pattern and causes of death is important to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of health policies and programs. The objective of this study was to assess t...

Authors: Irene R. Mremi, Susan F. Rumisha, Mercy G. Chiduo, Chacha D. Mangu, Denna M. Mkwashapi, Coleman Kishamawe, Emanuel P. Lyimo, Isolide S. Massawe, Lucas E. Matemba, Veneranda M. Bwana and Leonard E. G. Mboera

Improving program targeting to combat early-life mortality by identifying high-risk births: an application to India

It is widely recognized that there are multiple risk factors for early-life mortality. In practice most interventions to curb early-life mortality target births based on a single risk factor, such as poverty. ...

Authors: Antonio P. Ramos, Robert E. Weiss and Jody S. Heymann

Head-to-head comparison between the EQ-5D-5L and the EQ-5D-3L in general population health surveys

The EQ-5D has been frequently used in national health surveys. This study is a head-to-head comparison to assess how expanding the number of levels from three (EQ-5D-3L) to five in the new EQ-5D-5L version has...

Authors: Marc Martí-Pastor, Angels Pont, Mónica Ávila, Olatz Garin, Gemma Vilagut, Carlos G. Forero, Yolanda Pardo, Ricard Tresserras, Antonia Medina-Bustos, Oriol Garcia-Codina, Juan Cabasés, Luis Rajmil, Jordi Alonso and Montse Ferrer

Small area estimation of under-5 mortality in Bangladesh, Cameroon, Chad, Mozambique, Uganda, and Zambia using spatially misaligned data

The under-5 mortality rate (U5MR) is an important metric of child health and survival. Country-level estimates of U5MR are readily available, but efforts to estimate U5MR subnationally have been limited, in pa...

Authors: Laura Dwyer-Lindgren, Ellen R. Squires, Stephanie Teeple, Gloria Ikilezi, D. Allen Roberts, Danny V. Colombara, Sarah Katherine Allen, Stanley M. Kamande, Nicholas Graetz, Abraham D. Flaxman, Charbel El Bcheraoui, Kristjana Asbjornsdottir, Gilbert Asiimwe, Ângelo Augusto, Orvalho Augusto, Baltazar Chilundo…

Linkage of national soil quality measurements to primary care medical records in England and Wales: a new resource for investigating environmental impacts on human health

Long-term, low-level exposure to toxic elements in soil may be harmful to human health but large longitudinal cohort studies with sufficient follow-up time to study these effects are cost-prohibitive and impra...

Authors: Jack E. Gibson, E. Louise Ander, Mark Cave, Fiona Bath-Hextall, Anwar Musah and Jo Leonardi-Bee

Estimating program coverage in the treatment of severe acute malnutrition: a comparative analysis of the validity and operational feasibility of two methods

Many health programs can assess coverage using standardized cluster survey methods, but estimating the coverage of nutrition programs presents a special challenge due to low disease prevalence. Used since 2012...

Authors: Sheila Isanaka, Bethany L. Hedt-Gauthier, Rebecca F. Grais and Ben G. S. Allen

Comparing tariff and medical assistant assigned causes of death from verbal autopsy interviews in Matlab, Bangladesh: implications for a health and demographic surveillance system

Deaths in developing countries often occur outside health facilities, making it extremely difficult to gather reliable cause of death (COD) information. Automated COD assignment using a verbal autopsy instrume...

Authors: Riley H. Hazard, Nurul Alam, Hafizur Rahman Chowdhury, Tim Adair, Saidul Alam, Peter Kim Streatfield, Ian Douglas Riley and Alan D. Lopez

Projection of the future diabetes burden in the United States through 2060

In the United States, diabetes has increased rapidly, exceeding prior predictions. Projections of the future diabetes burden need to reflect changes in incidence, mortality, and demographics. We applied the mo...

Authors: Ji Lin, Theodore J. Thompson, Yiling J. Cheng, Xiaohui Zhuo, Ping Zhang, Edward Gregg and Deborah B. Rolka

Matrix methods in health demography: a new approach to the stochastic analysis of healthy longevity and DALYs

Increases in human longevity have made it critical to distinguish healthy longevity from longevity without regard to health. Current methods focus on expectations of healthy longevity, and are often limited to...

Authors: Hal Caswell and Virginia Zarulli

Life expectancy inequalities in the elderly by socioeconomic status: evidence from Italy

Life expectancy considerably increased in most developed countries during the twentieth century. However, the increase in longevity is neither uniform nor random across individuals belonging to various socioec...

Authors: Carlo Lallo and Michele Raitano

The relevance of spatial aggregation level and of applied methods in the analysis of geographical distribution of cancer mortality in mainland Portugal (2009–2013)

Knowledge regarding the geographical distribution of diseases is essential in public health in order to define strategies to improve the health of populations and quality of life.

Authors: Rita Roquette, Baltazar Nunes and Marco Painho

Health system strategies to increase HIV screening among pregnant women in Mesoamerica

To propose health system strategies to meeting the World Health Organization (WHO) recommendations on HIV screening through antenatal care (ANC) services, we assessed predictors of HIV screening, and simulated...

Authors: Charbel El Bcheraoui, Paola Zúñiga-Brenes, Diego Ríos-Zertuche, Erin B. Palmisano, Claire R. McNellan, Sima S. Desai, Marielle C. Gagnier, Annie Haakenstad, Casey Johanns, Alexandra Schaefer, Bernardo Hernandez, Emma Iriarte and Ali H. Mokdad

Epidemiological trends of sepsis in the twenty-first century (2000–2013): an analysis of incidence, mortality, and associated costs in Spain

Sepsis has represented a substantial health care and economic burden worldwide during the previous several decades. Our aim was to analyze the epidemiological trends of hospital admissions, deaths, hospital re...

Authors: Alejandro Álvaro-Meca, María A. Jiménez-Sousa, Dariela Micheloud, Ainhoa Sánchez-Lopez, María Heredia-Rodríguez, Eduardo Tamayo and Salvador Resino

Collecting verbal autopsies: improving and streamlining data collection processes using electronic tablets

There is increasing interest in using verbal autopsy to produce nationally representative population-level estimates of causes of death. However, the burden of processing a large quantity of surveys collected ...

Authors: Abraham D. Flaxman, Andrea Stewart, Jonathan C. Joseph, Nurul Alam, Sayed Saidul Alam, Hafizur Chowdhury, Meghan D. Mooney, Rasika Rampatige, Hazel Remolador, Diozele Sanvictores, Peter T. Serina, Peter Kim Streatfield, Veronica Tallo, Christopher J. L. Murray, Bernardo Hernandez, Alan D. Lopez…

Alcohol-impaired driving in US counties, 2002–2012

Excessive alcohol consumption and alcohol-impaired driving remain significant public health problems, leading to considerable morbidity and mortality, particularly among younger populations.

Authors: Jacob E. Sunshine, Laura Dwyer-Lindgren, Alan Chen, Sam R. Sharar, Erin B. Palmisano, Eileen M. Bulger and Ali H. Mokdad

Calculating census tract-based life expectancy in New York state: a generalizable approach

Life expectancy at birth (LE) has been calculated for states and counties. LE estimates at these levels mask health disparities in local communities. There are no nationwide estimates at the sub-county level. ...

Authors: Thomas O. Talbot, Douglas H. Done and Gwen D. Babcock

Multivariable regression analysis of list experiment data on abortion: results from a large, randomly-selected population based study in Liberia

The list experiment is a promising measurement tool for eliciting truthful responses to stigmatized or sensitive health behaviors. However, investigators may be hesitant to adopt the method due to previously u...

Authors: Heidi Moseson, Caitlin Gerdts, Christine Dehlendorf, Robert A. Hiatt and Eric Vittinghoff