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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Modernizing the design and analysis of prevalence surveys for neglected tropical diseases
AU - Diggle, Peter J
AU - Fronterre, Claudio
AU - Gass, Katherine
AU - Hundley, Lee
AU - Niles-Robin, Reza
AU - Sampson, Annastacia
AU - Morice, Ana
AU - Scholte, Ronaldo Carvalho
PY - 2023/10/9
Y1 - 2023/10/9
N2 - Current WHO guidelines set prevalence thresholds below which a neglected tropical disease can be considered to have been eliminated as a public health problem, and specify how surveys to assess whether elimination has been achieved should be designed and analysed, based on classical survey sampling methods. In this paper, we describe an alternative approach based on geospatial statistical modelling. We first show the gains in efficiency that can be obtained by exploiting any spatial correlation in the underlying prevalence. We then suggest that the current guidelines' implicit use of a significance testing argument is not appropriate; instead, we argue for a predictive inferential framework, leading to design criteria based on controlling the rates at which areas whose true prevalence lies above and below the elimination threshold are incorrectly classified. We describe how this approach naturally accommodates context-specific information in the form of georeferenced covariates that have been shown to be predictive of disease prevalence. Finally, we give a progress report of an ongoing collaboration with the Guyana Ministry of Health Neglected Tropical Disease programme on the design of an IDA (ivermectin, diethylcarbamazine and albendazole) Impact Survey of lymphatic filariasis to be conducted in Guyana in early 2023. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Challenges and opportunities in the fight against neglected tropical diseases: a decade from the London Declaration on NTDs’.
AB - Current WHO guidelines set prevalence thresholds below which a neglected tropical disease can be considered to have been eliminated as a public health problem, and specify how surveys to assess whether elimination has been achieved should be designed and analysed, based on classical survey sampling methods. In this paper, we describe an alternative approach based on geospatial statistical modelling. We first show the gains in efficiency that can be obtained by exploiting any spatial correlation in the underlying prevalence. We then suggest that the current guidelines' implicit use of a significance testing argument is not appropriate; instead, we argue for a predictive inferential framework, leading to design criteria based on controlling the rates at which areas whose true prevalence lies above and below the elimination threshold are incorrectly classified. We describe how this approach naturally accommodates context-specific information in the form of georeferenced covariates that have been shown to be predictive of disease prevalence. Finally, we give a progress report of an ongoing collaboration with the Guyana Ministry of Health Neglected Tropical Disease programme on the design of an IDA (ivermectin, diethylcarbamazine and albendazole) Impact Survey of lymphatic filariasis to be conducted in Guyana in early 2023. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Challenges and opportunities in the fight against neglected tropical diseases: a decade from the London Declaration on NTDs’.
KW - NTD
KW - geospatial methods
KW - prevalence survey
U2 - 10.1098/rstb.2022.0276
DO - 10.1098/rstb.2022.0276
M3 - Journal article
VL - 378
JO - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
JF - Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences
SN - 0962-8436
IS - 1887
ER -