Prenatal exposure to acetaminophen and adolescent assessment of behavior: Discrepancies by age and reporter.

Acetaminophen, which is one of the most commonly used medications during pregnancy, has been linked to adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes among offspring during childhood. Less is known about associations with outcomes occurring later in adolescence. We conducted a follow-up study of children born between 1996 and 2002.

United States community births increased by 20% from 2019 to 2020.

Background: Anecdotal and emerging evidence suggested that the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic may have influenced women's attitudes toward community birth. Our purpose was to examine trends in community births from 2019 to 2020, and the risk profile of these births.

Methods: Recently released 2020 birth certificate data were compared with prior years' data to analyze trends in community births by socio-demographic and medical characteristics.

A case study and proposal for publishing directed acyclic graphs: The effectiveness of the quadrivalent human papillomavirus vaccine in perinatally HIV Infected girls.

Background: Developing a causal graph is an important step in etiologic research planning and can be used to highlight data flaws and irreparable bias and confounding. As a case study, we consider recent findings that suggest human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine is less effective against HPV-associated disease among girls living with HIV compared to girls without HIV.

Objectives: To understand the relationship between HIV status and HPV vaccine effectiveness, it is important to outline the key assumptions of the causal mechanisms before designing a study to investigate the effect of the HPV vaccine in girls living with HIV infection.

Assessing knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards causal directed acyclic graphs: a qualitative research project.

Causal graphs provide a key tool for optimizing the validity of causal effect estimates. Although a large literature exists on the mathematical theory underlying the use of causal graphs, less literature exists to aid applied researchers in understanding how best to develop and use causal graphs in their research projects. We sought to understand why researchers do or do not regularly use DAGs by surveying practicing epidemiologists and medical researchers on their knowledge, level of interest, attitudes, and practices towards the use of causal graphs in applied epidemiology and health research.

A systematic review of quantitative bias analysis applied to epidemiological research.

Background: Quantitative bias analysis (QBA) measures study errors in terms of direction, magnitude and uncertainty. This systematic review aimed to describe how QBA has been applied in epidemiological research in 2006-19.

Methods: We searched PubMed for English peer-reviewed studies applying QBA to real-data applications.

Complex systems models for causal inference in social epidemiology.

Systems models, which by design aim to capture multi-level complexity, are a natural choice of tool for bridging the divide between social epidemiology and causal inference. In this commentary, we discuss the potential uses of complex systems models for improving our understanding of quantitative causal effects in social epidemiology. To put systems models in context, we will describe how this approach could be used to optimise the distribution of COVID-19 response resources to minimise social inequalities during and after the pandemic.