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Estimating Risks to the Public Health

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Operations Research and Health Care

Part of the book series: International Series in Operations Research & Management Science ((ISOR,volume 70))

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Abstract

Risks to public health arise from infectious disease, exposure to toxic substances such as asbestos, environmental insults, and from lifestyle risks such as smoking. The risk assessment that must precede healthcare interventions or legislation requires probabilistic, statistical and computational methodologies. The introduction to this chapter discusses how our perception of the risks to public health is changing, and identifies some trends in the methodologies used for risk analysis. Risk assessment is largely characterised by likelihood-based statistical inference, using point-process models of disease intensity as a function of position in space and time. Conditional likelihoods such as Cox’s partial likelihood and matched-pairs logistic regression are widely used to eliminate confounding variables. Two examples of the use of such conditional likelihoods are given. In the first, new tests for the space-time clustering of cases characteristic of infectious disease are derived and exemplified. In a second application of conditional likelihood, some research on risks of Shigella infection to schoolchildren arising at school or from playmates is presented. The original content of this chapter is two new tests of space-time clustering, and a case-study using an unusual conditional likelihood.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Operational Research and Applied Statistics, University of Salford Salford, M5 4WT, UK

    Rose Baker

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  1. Rose Baker
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Stanford University, USA

    Margaret L. Brandeau

  2. Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

    François Sainfort

  3. University of California at Los Angeles, USA

    William P. Pierskalla

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© 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.

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Baker, R. (2005). Estimating Risks to the Public Health. In: Brandeau, M.L., Sainfort, F., Pierskalla, W.P. (eds) Operations Research and Health Care. International Series in Operations Research & Management Science, vol 70. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-8066-2_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-8066-2_9

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Boston, MA

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-7629-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-8066-1

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

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