Parameters associated with design effect of child anthropometry indicators in small-scale field surveys.

Background: Cluster surveys provide rapid but representative estimates of key nutrition indicators in humanitarian crises. For these surveys, an accurate estimate of the design effect is critical to calculate a sample size that achieves adequate precision with the minimum number of sampling units. This paper describes the variability in design effect for three key nutrition indicators measured in small-scale surveys and models the association of design effect with parameters hypothesized to explain this variability.

The PROBIT approach in estimating the prevalence of wasting: revisiting bias and precision.

Background: The PROBIT methodology was presented in the 1995 World Health Organization Technical Report on Anthropometry as an alternative to the standard prevalence based method of measuring malnutrition in children. Theoretically the PROBIT method will always give a smaller standard error than the standard prevalence method in measuring malnutrition. A recent article by Dale et al.

Shipshape: sanitation inspections on cruise ships, 1990-2005, Vessel Sanitation Program, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the course of a successful collaboration between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the cruise ship industry on reducing common-source outbreaks, CDC's Vessel Sanitation Program (VSP) has expanded its training, education, and cruise ship inspection programs. The study reported here evaluated 15 years of ship sanitation inspection data from the National Center for Environmental Health and assessed performance in specific sanitation categories from 1996 to 2005. During the period 1990-2005, scores from cruise ship environmental sanitation inspections steadily improved.

Epidemiology of gastroenteritis on cruise ships, 2001-2004.

Background: The incidence of diarrheal disease among cruise ship passengers declined from 29.2 cases per 100,000 passenger days in 1990 to 16.3 per 100,000 passenger days in 2000.