Automated versus physician assignment of cause of death for verbal autopsies: randomized trial of 9374 deaths in 117 villages in India.

Background: Verbal autopsies with physician assignment of cause of death (COD) are commonly used in settings where medical certification of deaths is uncommon. It remains unanswered if automated algorithms can replace physician assignment.

Methods: We randomized verbal autopsy interviews for deaths in 117 villages in rural India to either physician or automated COD assignment.

Automated verbal autopsy classification: using one-against-all ensemble method and Naïve Bayes classifier.

Verbal autopsy (VA) deals with post-mortem surveys about deaths, mostly in low and middle income countries, where the majority of deaths occur at home rather than a hospital, for retrospective assignment of causes of death (COD) and subsequently evidence-based health system strengthening. Automated algorithms for VA COD assignment have been developed and their performance has been assessed against physician and clinical diagnoses. Since the performance of automated classification methods remains low, we aimed to enhance the Naïve Bayes Classifier (NBC) algorithm to produce better ranked COD classifications on 26,766 deaths from four globally diverse VA datasets compared to some of the leading VA classification methods, namely Tariff, InterVA-4, InSilicoVA and NBC.

Geospatial, racial, and educational variation in firearm mortality in the USA, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia, 1990-2015: a comparative analysis of vital statistics data.

Background: Firearm mortality is a leading, and largely avoidable, cause of death in the USA, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. We aimed to assess the changes over time and demographic determinants of firearm deaths in these four countries between 1990 and 2015.

Methods: In this comparative analysis of firearm mortality, we examined national vital statistics data from 1990-2015 from four publicly available data repositories in the USA, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia.

Divergent trends in ischaemic heart disease and stroke mortality in India from 2000 to 2015: a nationally representative mortality study.

Introduction: India accounts for about a fifth of cardiovascular deaths globally, but nationally representative data on mortality trends are not yet available. In this nationwide mortality study, we aimed to assess the trends in ischaemic heart disease and stroke mortality over 15 years using the Million Death Study.

Methods: We determined national and subnational cardiovascular mortality rates and trends by sex and birth cohort using cause of death ascertained by verbal autopsy from 2001 to 2013 among 2·4 million households.

Exploring the social and neighbourhood predictors of diabetes: a comparison between Toronto and Chicago.

Objectives: This report examined the impact and extent that spatial access to primary care physicians (PCPs) and social neighbourhood-/community-level factors have on diabetes prevalence for Toronto and Chicago.

Methods: The two-step floating catchment area method was used to compute spatial access scores. Bivariate correlation and multivariate linear regression identified the factors that were associated with, and/or predicted, diabetes prevalence.