Fast approximate Bayesian inference of HIV indicators using PCA adaptive Gauss-Hermite quadrature
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Published version
Author(s)
Howes, Adam
Stringer, Alex
Flaxman, Seth R
Imai–Eaton, Jeffrey W
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Naomi is a spatial evidence synthesis model used to produce district-level HIV epidemic indicators in sub-Saharan Africa. Multiple outcomes of policy interest, including HIV prevalence, HIV incidence, and antiretroviral therapy treatment coverage are jointly modelled using both household survey data and routinely reported health system data. The model is provided as a tool for countries to input their data to and generate estimates with during a yearly process supported by UNAIDS. Previously, inference has been conducted using empirical Bayes and a Gaussian approximation, implemented via the TMB R package. We propose a new inference method based on an extension of adaptive Gauss-Hermite quadrature to deal with more than 20 hyperparameters. Using data from Malawi, our method improves the accuracy of inferences for model parameters, while being substantially faster to run than Hamiltonian Monte Carlo with the No-U-Turn sampler. Our implementation leverages the existing TMB C++ template for the model’s log-posterior, and is compatible with any model with such a template.
Date Issued
2026-02-07
Date Acceptance
2025-11-01
Citation
Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2026, 618
ISSN
0022-5193
Publisher
Elsevier BV
Journal / Book Title
Journal of Theoretical Biology
Volume
618
Copyright Statement
© 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/41232599
PII: S0022-5193(25)00256-5
Subjects
AGHQ
Bayesian statistics
HIV epidemiology
INLA
approximate inference
evidence synthesis
small-area estimation
spatial statistics
Publication Status
Published
Coverage Spatial
England
Article Number
112290
Date Publish Online
2025-11-11