Computationally efficient Bayesian inference for semi-parametric joint models of competing risks survival and skewed longitudinal data using integrated nested Laplace approximation.

Background: Joint modeling is widely used in medical research to properly analyze longitudinal biomarkers and survival outcomes simultaneously and to guide appropriate interventions in public health. However, such models become increasingly complex and computationally intensive when accounting for multiple features of these outcomes. The need for computationally efficient methods in joint modeling of competing risks survival outcomes and longitudinal biomarkers is particularly critical in clinical and epidemiological settings, where prompt decision-making is essential.

Comparative analysis of predictors of child mortality in Ethiopia via frequentist and Bayesian approaches.

The child mortality rate is a leading factor in the well-being and development of a nation. It measures the quality of life for a given population. This study aimed to determine the effects of under-five child mortality in Ethiopia.

Accounting for white matter uptake improves between tracer agreement in amyloid PET.

Introduction: Amyloid positron emission tomography (PET) allows in vivo measurement of amyloid plaque deposition; however, different tracers lead to different results. We test the hypothesis that the variability in amyloid measurements is related to white matter retention, and accounting for this variability can improve agreements.

Methods: Data from the Centiloid project was downloaded and processed for four F18 tracer-to-Pittsburgh Compound B (PiB) pairs to obtain mean cortical standardized uptake value ratio (MCSUVR).

Comparisons of cox semi-parametric and parametric shared frailty models: application for under-five children survival in sub-Saharan Africa.

Background: The under-five child mortality in sub-Saharan African (sSA) countries is a persistent problem with limited effort being made to explore the determinants of disparities across countries and their lower administrative districts. A child's survival may depend on several known and unknown covariates and vary across the study areas. The main objective of this study is to assess the time to death of under-five children and its associated risk factors by comparing the performance of semiparametric and parametric frailty models across sSA regions.

Determinants of the perceived financial threat of COVID-19 and implications for household economic stability: an application of the partial proportional odds model.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most significant global health crises in recent years. This study aimed to assess the determinants of perceived financial threat of COVID-19 and its implications on household's economic stability in Ethiopia.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on 3058 households from the third round of the COVID-19 high-frequency phone survey of households (HFPS-HH) data, executed by the Central Statistical Agency of Ethiopia in partnership with the World Bank.

An Online Contraception Decision Aid for Transgender and Gender-Nonconforming Persons Assigned Female at Birth.

We launched a study to develop an online contraception decision aid to address the unique needs of TGNC AFAB individuals. Guided by user-centered design principles, we developed a prototype tool and conducted a preliminary evaluation that showed good system performance (94% accuracy and positive assessment of usefulness/usability). This research fills a critical knowledge gap, advocates health equity for gender-minority groups, and develops guiding principles for engaging them in participatory design of digital health tools.

Adapting and evaluating deep-pseudo neural network for survival data with time-varying covariates.

The Extended Cox model provides an alternative to the proportional hazard Cox model for modelling data including time-varying covariates. Incorporating time-varying covariates is particularly beneficial when dealing with survival data, as it can improve the precision of survival function estimation. Deep learning methods, in particular, the Deep-pseudo survival neural network (DSNN) model have demonstrated a high potential for accurately predicting right-censored survival data when dealing with time-invariant variables.

Exploring machine learning classification for community based health insurance enrollment in Ethiopia.

Background: Community-based health insurance (CBHI) is a vital tool for achieving universal health coverage (UHC), a key global health priority outlined in the sustainable development goals (SDGs). Sub-Saharan Africa continues to face challenges in achieving UHC and protecting individuals from the financial burden of disease. As a result, CBHI has become popular in low- and middle-income countries, including Ethiopia.

Effects of vector control interventions on spatio-temporal changes of malaria risk in children aged 2-10 in sub-Saharan African regions during 2011-2020.

Background: Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has a disproportionately high malaria fatality rate globally, with young children accounting for the majority of fatalities. The objective of this study is to investigate the spatiotemporal dynamics of malaria infection risk and assess the effect of vector control interventions on malaria infection rates in SSA nations.

Methods: We utilized data from the Malaria Atlas Project regarding the prevalence of malaria infections and vector control interventions across 634 administrative areas in 45 SSA countries over a decade.

Spatial disparities of antenatal care utilization among pregnant women in sub-Saharan Africa-Bayesian geo-additive modelling approach.

Background: Antenatal care (ANC) is critical for ensuring healthy pregnancies and positive birth outcomes. Despite its importance, significant disparities in ANC access and utilization exist across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), influenced by various socioeconomic, geographical, and systemic factors. This study aimed to analyze the spatial disparities in the proportion of recommended ANC utilization and its associated risk factors among pregnant women in 34 sub-Saharan African countries.

Trend of malaria parasites infection in Ethiopia along an international border: a Bayesian spatio-temporal study.

Background: Malaria is a major worldwide health concern that impacts many individuals worldwide. P. falciparum is Africa's main malaria cause.

Pooled prevalence of induced abortion and associated factors among reproductive age women in sub-Saharan Africa: a Bayesian multilevel approach.

Background: Abortion is one of the leading causes of maternal death in developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa (sSA,). In this region, abortion is responsible for 38,000 maternal deaths, making the area with the highest rate of abortion-related mortality in the world. This study aimed to examine the prevalence and associated factors of induced abortion in 33 countries in the region.

Population affinity estimation in forensic anthropology: a South African perspective.

Forensic anthropologists face the complex task of estimating population affinity from skeletal remains, a process that involves inferring culturally constructed "social race" from biological tissues, a challenge further complicated by the nuanced distinction between population affinity and "race". The difficulty in making these estimations arises from the complex interplay between social constructs of race, skeletal morphology, and geographic origin. These factors are further influenced by elements such as assortative mating and institutional racism in regions such as South Africa and the United States.

Determinants of child malnutrition and morbidity in Ethiopia: a structural equation modeling approach.

Background: Childhood malnutrition and morbidity remain significant public health challenges in Ethiopia, highlighting the need to assess the risk factors contributing to these issues for effective prevention and control strategies. Thus, this study aims to investigate the underlying risk factors by employing a structural equation model to analyze malnutrition as a mediator in the relationship between selected factors and morbidity.

Methods: The study utilized data from the 2016 Ethiopia Demographic and Health Survey and a sample of 8,560 under-five children were considered.

Prevalence and associated factors of immunization among under-five children in Somalia.

Background: Children worldwide can live lives free from various illnesses and disabilities due to vaccination. For instance, vaccination has eliminated smallpox, a deformative and frequently fatal illness that claimed an estimated 300 million lives in the twentieth century. However, due to a lack of access to immunization and other health services, 14.

Bivariate multilevel modeling of antenatal care contacts and place of delivery among reproductive-aged women in Ethiopia.

Background: Antenatal care (ANC) contacts, along with enhanced health facilities for delivery, are essential components of maternal and child healthcare, as these significantly contribute to both mothers and their newborn child's health. Antennal care contacts primarily help women maintain normal pregnancies by detecting pre-existing conditions and preventing complications that may arise during childbirth. This study intended to determine possible factors that affect both ANC contact and place of delivery among women in Ethiopia.

Spatiotemporal models with confounding effects: application on under-five mortality across four sub-Saharan African countries.

Background: Different strategies have been developed to minimize under-five mortality (U5M) in sub-Saharan African (sSA) countries; however, it is still a major health concern for children in the region. Spatiotemporal modeling is important for areal data collected over time. However, when the number of time points and spatial areas is large and the areas are disconnected, fitting the model becomes computationally complex because of the high number of required parameters to be estimated.

Development and initial validation of the implicit internalized sexual orientation stigma affect misattribution procedure.

Introduction: This article describes the development and initial validation of a measure of implicit internalized stigma among queer people, the Implicit Internalized Sexual Orientation Stigma Affect Misattribution Procedure (Internal-SOS-AMP), a computer-administered sequential priming procedure.

Methods: The creation of the Internal-SOS-AMP involved a mixed-methods approach, including a literature review, expert interviews, stimuli selection and pilot testing, data collection from a large sample, reliability testing, correlational analyses, and confirmatory factor analysis. Psychometric testing was conducted with a national sample of 500 queer adults who completed two waves of data collection.

Individual and community-level factors associated with adequate antenatal care service utilization in sub-Saharan Africa.

Background: Sub-Saharan Africa (sSA) continues to rank among the regions in the world with the highest rates of maternal mortality and the lowest rates of utilization of maternal health care. The risk of death for women in sSA is 268 times higher than that of women in high-income nations. Adequate antenatal care (ANC) services utilization is essential to the mother's and the baby's survival and well-being.

Robust PCA with and Norms: A Novel Method for Low-Quality Retinal Image Enhancement.

Nonmydriatic retinal fundus images often suffer from quality issues and artifacts due to ocular or systemic comorbidities, leading to potential inaccuracies in clinical diagnoses. In recent times, deep learning methods have been widely employed to improve retinal image quality. However, these methods often require large datasets and lack robustness in clinical settings.

The impact of enhanced Milieu teaching with phonological emphasis (EMT + PE) on the speech and language outcomes for toddlers with cleft palate in Brazil and the United States of America.

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to compare the speech and language outcomes of children with cleft palate with or without cleft lip (CP+/-L) in the USA to children with CP+/-L in Brazil who underwent intervention with enhanced Milieu teaching with phonological emphasis (EMT + PE), as there are few cross-country intervention comparisons for children with CP+/-L.

Method: This is a retrospective analysis of 29 participants from the USA and 24 participants from Brazil who were matched on age. The US participants were between the ages of 13-35 months ( = 23.

A novel nonparametric time-dependent precision-recall curve estimator for right-censored survival data.

In order to assess prognostic risk for individuals in precision health research, risk prediction models are increasingly used, in which statistical models are used to estimate the risk of future outcomes based on clinical and nonclinical characteristics. The predictive accuracy of a risk score must be assessed before it can be used in routine clinical decision making, where the receiver operator characteristic curves, precision-recall curves, and their corresponding area under the curves are commonly used metrics to evaluate the discriminatory ability of a continuous risk score. Among these the precision-recall curves have been shown to be more informative when dealing with unbalanced biomarker distribution between classes, which is common in rare event, even though except one, all existing methods are proposed for classic uncensored data.

Time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve estimator for correlated right-censored time-to-event data.

In clinical trials, evaluating the accuracy of risk scores (markers) derived from prognostic models for prediction of survival outcomes is of major concern. The time-dependent receiver operating characteristic curve and the corresponding area under the receiver operating characteristic curve are appealing measures to evaluate the predictive accuracy. Several estimation methods have been proposed in the context of classical right-censored data which assumes the event time of individuals are independent.

Role of gender in explaining metabolic syndrome risk factors in an Iranian rural population using structural equation modelling.

Many factors can lead to an increase in the prevalence of metabolic syndrome (MetS) in different populations. Using an advanced structural equation model (SEM), this study is aimed to determine the most important risk factors of MetS, as a continuous latent variable, using a large number of males and females. We also aimed to evaluate the interrelations among the associated factors involved in the development of MetS.

Correlates of illness uncertainty in cancer survivors and family caregivers: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Purpose: Illness uncertainty is widely recognized as a psychosocial stressor for cancer survivors and their family caregivers. This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to identify the sociodemographic, physical, and psychosocial correlates that are associated with illness uncertainty in adult cancer survivors and their family caregivers.

Methods: Six scholarly databases were searched.