Estimating the population-level impact of vaccines using synthetic controls.

ABSTRACT: When a new vaccine is introduced, it is critical to monitor trends in disease rates to ensure that the vaccine is effective and to quantify its impact. However, estimates from observational studies can be confounded by unrelated changes in healthcare utilization, changes in the underlying health of the population, or changes in reporting. Other diseases are often used to detect and adjust for these changes, but choosing an appropriate control disease a priori is a major challenge. The "synthetic controls" (causal impact) method, which was originally developed for website analytics and social sciences, provides an appealing solution. With this approach, potential comparison time series are combined into a composite and are used to generate a counterfactual estimate, which can be compared wi

SUBMITTER: Bruhn CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5321019 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature