The designs for outbreak investigation: an example of acute hepatitis E outbreak

ZHU Yi-min; LI Ya-xin; MU Yu-tong; KAN Hui; ZHANG Miao; FAN Wei; LI Yi-jie; ZHENG Ying-jie

doi:10.16462/j.cnki.zhjbkz.2020.11.001

Volume 24 Issue 11

Dec. 2020

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Article Navigation > CHINESE JOURNAL OF DISEASE CONTROL & PREVENTION > 2020 > 24(11): 1241-1245,1347

ZHU Yi-min, LI Ya-xin, MU Yu-tong, KAN Hui, ZHANG Miao, FAN Wei, LI Yi-jie, ZHENG Ying-jie. The designs for outbreak investigation: an example of acute hepatitis E outbreak[J]. CHINESE JOURNAL OF DISEASE CONTROL & PREVENTION, 2020, 24(11): 1241-1245,1347. doi: 10.16462/j.cnki.zhjbkz.2020.11.001

Citation:

ZHU Yi-min, LI Ya-xin, MU Yu-tong, KAN Hui, ZHANG Miao, FAN Wei, LI Yi-jie, ZHENG Ying-jie. The designs for outbreak investigation: an example of acute hepatitis E outbreak[J]. CHINESE JOURNAL OF DISEASE CONTROL & PREVENTION, 2020, 24(11): 1241-1245,1347. doi: 10.16462/j.cnki.zhjbkz.2020.11.001

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The designs for outbreak investigation: an example of acute hepatitis E outbreak

doi: 10.16462/j.cnki.zhjbkz.2020.11.001

Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, Fudan University, Key Laboratory for Health Technology Assessment, National Commission of Health and Family Planning, Fudan University, Key Laboratory of Public Health Safety, Ministry of Education, School of Public Health, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China

Funds:

National Natural Science Foundation of China 81373065

National Natural Science Foundation of China 81773490

The National Key Research and Development Program of China 2017YFC1200203

More Information

Corresponding author: ZHENG Ying-jie, E-mail:yjzheng@fudan.edu.cn
Received Date: 2020-06-18
Rev Recd Date: 2020-09-04
Publish Date: 2020-11-10

Abstract

Abstract

Once a disease outbreak is established, it means that disease outcome (and its cause or suspected exposure) has already occurred. Outbreak is one of the indicators for the epidemic intensity of a disease. Although it does not have any design elements, there are many design options for its investigation. This article uses a single hepatitis E outbreak example to investigate on the students and obtain three answers to students' judgments on the design type: cross-sectional design, case-control design and historical cohort design. With the help of causal thinking and causal diagrams, this article finds the example do not meet the designs above: only the cases for outbreak confirmation were known and can possibly be measured twice, the exposure is unknown before the investigation, and two measured temporal sequences between measured exposure and outcome existed. Based on the representativeness of the survey population and the two-time identifying characteristics of the outbreak cases, this example could be considered as a cross-sectional cohort study which is a cross-sectional study of the current population based on a hypothetical historical population. For the outcome (and the exposure) has already occurred, the accuracy of causal inference depends on the accuracy of their reconstruction history. These results imply that we should strength our understanding of such research based on reconstruction history.
- Outbreak investigation,
- Causal thinking,
- Causal diagram,
- Historical reconstruction,
- Causal inference,
- Research design

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References(28)

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