Epidemiologic Reviews Copyright © 2005 by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health All rights reserved
ARTICLES |
Methodological Challenges and Contributions in Disaster Epidemiology
1 Department of Biostatistics, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD
2 Department of Environmental Health and Risk Assessment, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, MA
Correspondence to Dr. Francesca Dominici, Department of Biostatistics, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, 615 North Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205 (e-mail: fdominic@jhsph.edu).
Received for publication February 28, 2005; accepted for publication March 25, 2005.
MUPS, medically unexplained physical symptoms • PTSD, post-traumatic stress disorder
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INTRODUCTION |
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Considering the very unusual and extreme situations under which a disaster and the corresponding adverse health responses occur, it is challenging to provide a unified methodological framework for disaster epidemiology. In this commentary, we identify targets of estimation and common challenges in estimating the quantities of interest. In some cases, we discuss methodological contributions and future work regarding the design and analysis of epidemiologic studies of disasters. To ground our points, we refer to some of the papers published in this issue.
Although disasters occur in a wide variety of settings and circumstances, it is possible to identify several methodological challenges and commonalities in the epidemiologic studies of disasters published in this issue. These provide a platform for developing statistical methods to assess short- and long-term adverse health effects of disasters and to predict consequences of future disasters.
Disasters have been defined as acute, collectively experienced traumatic events, with a
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ESTIMATION TARGETS |
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ESTIMATING PREVALENCE |
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ESTIMATING THE EXPOSURE-RESPONSE RELATION |
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CROSS-SECTIONAL VERSUS COHORT STUDIES |
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PREDICTING THE FUTURE OCCURRENCE OF A DISASTER |
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SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS |
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THE MEDIA |
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CONCLUSIONS |
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