Abstract
Analyses of epidemiological studies of the association between short-term changes in air pollution and health outcomes have not sufficiently discussed the degree to which the statistical models chosen for these analyses reflect what is actually known about the true data-generating distribution. We present a method to estimate population-level ambient air pollution (NO2) exposure-health (wheeze in children with asthma) response functions that is not dependent on assumptions about the data-generating function that underlies the observed data and which focuses on a specific scientific parameter of interest (the marginal adjusted association of exposure on probability of wheeze, over a grid of possible exposure values). We show that this approach provides a more nuanced summary of the data than more typical statistical methods used in air pollution epidemiology and epidemiological studies in general.
Disciplines
Biostatistics
Suggested Citation
Eliseeva, Ekaterina; Hubbard, Alan E.; and Tager, Ira B., "An Application Of Machine Learning Methods To The Derivation Of Exposure-Response Curves For Respiratory Outcomes" (May 2013). U.C. Berkeley Division of Biostatistics Working Paper Series. Working Paper 309.
https://biostats.bepress.com/ucbbiostat/paper309
Comments
This research was supported by the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (grant P20ES018173) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (grant RD834596).The authors thank the FACES/CHAPS team for providing advice and support with the research and preparation of this manuscript.