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Restricted spatial models for the analysis of geographic and racial disparities in the incidence of low birthweight in Pennsylvania.
- Source :
-
Spatial and spatio-temporal epidemiology [Spat Spatiotemporal Epidemiol] 2024 Jun; Vol. 49, pp. 100649. Date of Electronic Publication: 2024 Mar 23. - Publication Year :
- 2024
-
Abstract
- The incidence of low birthweight is a common measure of public health due to the increased risk of complications associated with infants having low and very low birthweights. Moreover, many factors that increase the risk of an infant having a low birthweight can be linked to the mother's socioeconomic status, leading to large racial/ethnic disparities in its incidence. Our objective is thus to analyze the incidence of low and very low birthweight in Pennsylvania counties by race/ethnicity. Due to the small number of births in many Pennsylvania counties when stratified by race/ethnicity, our methods must walk a fine line: While we wish to leverage spatial structure to improve the precision of our estimates, we also wish to avoid oversmoothing the data, which can yield spurious conclusions. As such, we develop a framework by which we can measure (and control) the informativeness of our spatial model. To analyze the data, we first model the Pennsylvania birth data using the conditional autoregressive model to demonstrate the extent to which it can lead to oversmoothing. We then reanalyze the data using our proposed framework and highlight its ability to detect (or not detect) evidence of racial/ethnic disparities in the incidence of low birthweight.<br />Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare the following financial interests/personal relationships which may be considered as potential competing interests: Harrison Quick (and other authors) reports financial support was provided by County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Program. Harrison Quick (and other authors) reports financial support was provided by National Institutes of Health.<br /> (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 1877-5853
- Volume :
- 49
- Database :
- MEDLINE
- Journal :
- Spatial and spatio-temporal epidemiology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 38876562
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sste.2024.100649