Assessing local chlamydia screening performance by combining survey and administrative data to account for differences in local population characteristics
File(s)s41598-019-43521-y.pdf (2.16 MB)
Published version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Reducing health inequalities requires improved understanding of the causes of variation. Local-level variation reflects differences in local population characteristics and health system performance. Identifying low- and high-performing localities allows investigation into these differences. We used Multilevel Regression with Post-stratification (MRP) to synthesise data from multiple sources, using chlamydia testing as our example. We used national probability survey data to identify individual-level characteristics associated with chlamydia testing and combined this with local-level census data to calculate expected levels of testing in each local authority (LA) in England, allowing us to identify LAs where observed chlamydia testing rates were lower or higher than expected, given population characteristics. Taking account of multiple covariates, including age, sex, ethnicity, student and cohabiting status, 5.4% and 3.5% of LAs had testing rates higher than expected for 95% and 99% posterior credible intervals, respectively; 60.9% and 50.8% had rates lower than expected. Residual differences between observed and MRP expected values were smallest for LAs with large proportions of non-white ethnic populations. London boroughs that were markedly different from expected MRP values (90% posterior exceedance probability) had actively targeted risk groups. This type of synthesis allows more refined inferences to be made at small-area levels than previously feasible.
Date Issued
2019-05-08
Date Acceptance
2019-04-18
Citation
Scientific Reports, 2019, 9
ISSN
2045-2322
Publisher
Nature Publishing Group
Journal / Book Title
Scientific Reports
Volume
9
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2019. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Cre-ative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not per-mitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Sponsor
National Institute for Health Research
Medical Research Council (MRC)
Identifier
https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/nathan.green
Grant Number
HPRU-2012-10080
MR/R015600/1
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 7070