How reliable are self-reported estimates of birth registration completeness? Comparison with vital statistics systems
by Adair T et alThis study assesses the concordance of self-reported birth registration and certification completeness with completeness calculated from civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems data for 57 countries. These findings suggest that self-reported completeness figures over-estimate completeness when compared with CRVS data, especially at lower levels of completeness, partly due to over-reporting of registration by respondents. Estimates published by UNICEF should be viewed cautiously, especially given their wide usage.
Epidemic curves are an important component of the public health and global health toolbox. Learn more about creating and interpretting them.
Become a Cochrane citizen scientist. Anyone can join their collaborative volunteer effort.
Around half of the clinical trials done on medicines we use today are not published; a tragic truth that needs to be changed.
Building on the concept of rapid learning health systems, Dr. Peek’s seminar focuses on the use of health information technology to address epidemiological and public health questions and to accelerate the translation of research findings to clinical practice.
Healthcare associated infections (HAI) are of important concern in patient care. This talk discusses Visual Analytics techniques which have been developed to help detect, monitor, analyse and understand trends, clusters and outbreaks of HAI.
Anders Björkman is Professor of Infectious Disease at the Karolinska Institute. In this video, Anders talks about how the efficacy of antimalarials is a major obstacle in the path towards full malaria elimination.
Professor Mike English explains how KEMRI-Wellcome are ''working with government to generate patient level data from a network of Kenyan hospitals as a platform for research'.
Internet-based systems for epidemiological studies have advantages overtraditional approaches as they can potentially recruit and monitor a wider range of individuals in a relatively inexpensive fashion. We studied the association between communication strategies used for recruitment (offline, online, face-to-face) and follow-up participation in nine Internet-based cohorts: the Influenzanet network of platforms for influenza surveillance which includes seven cohorts in seven different European countries, the Italian birth cohort Ninfea and the New Zealand birth cohortELF. Follow-up participation varied from 43% to 89% depending on the ohort.Although there were heterogeneities among studies, participants who became aware of the study through an online communication campaign compared with those through traditional offline media seemed to have a lower follow-up participation in 8 out of 9 cohorts. There were no clear differences in participation between participants enrolled face-to-face and those enrolled through other offline strategies. An Internet-based campaign for Internet-based epidemiological studies seems to be less effective than an offline one in enrolling volunteers who keepparticipating in follow-up questionnaires. This suggests that even for Internet-based epidemiological studies an offline enrollment campaign would be helpful in order to achieve a higher participation proportion and limit the cohort attrition.
In this article, the authors illustrate five basic statistical concepts that can significantly impact the interpretation of the medical literature and its application to the care of patients, drawing examples from the vaccine literature: (i) consider clinical and statistical significance separately, (ii) evaluate absolute risks rather than relative risks, (iii) examine confidence intervals rather than p values, (iv) use caution when considering isolated significant p values in the setting of multiple testing, and (v) keep in mind that statistically nonsignificant results may not exclude clinically important benefits or harms.
A range of downloadable templates and tools for Clinical Research, including monitoring checklists, budget spreadsheets, informed consent forms, SOPs and so on.