Adjusting for spatial variation when assessing individual-level risk: A case-study in the epidemiology of snake-bite in Sri Lanka.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Health outcomes and causality are usually assessed with individual level sociodemographic variables. Studies that consider only individual-level variables can suffer from residual confounding. This can result in individual variables that are unrelated to risk behaving as proxies for uncaptured information. There is a scarcity of literature on risk factors for snakebite. In this study, we evaluate the individual-level risk factors of snakebite in Sri Lanka and highlight the impact of spatial confounding on determining the individual-level risk effects.

Methods

Data was obtained from the National Snakebite Survey of Sri Lanka. This was an Island-wide community-based survey. The survey sampled 165,665 individuals from all 25 districts of the country. We used generali

SUBMITTER: Ediriweera DS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6776347 | biostudies-literature | 2019

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature