Exploring the relationship between access to water, sanitation and hygiene and soil-transmitted helminth infection: a demonstration of two recursive partitioning tools.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Soil-transmitted helminths (STH) - a class of parasites that affect billions of people - can be mitigated using mass drug administration, though reinfection following treatment occurs within a few months. Improvements to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) likely provide sustained benefit, but few rigorous studies have evaluated the specific WASH components most influential in reducing infection. There is a need for alternative analytic approaches to help identify, characterize and further refine the WASH components that are most important to STH reinfection. Traditional epidemiological approaches are not well-suited for assessing the complex and highly correlated relationships commonly seen in WASH.

Methodology

We introduce two recursive partitioning approaches:

SUBMITTER: Gass K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4055441 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature