Editing Epidemiology (section)

=== Humanitarian context ===

As the surveillance and reporting of diseases and other health factors become increasingly difficult in humanitarian crisis situations, the methodologies used to report the data are compromised. One study found that less than half (42.4%) of nutrition surveys sampled from humanitarian contexts correctly calculated the prevalence of malnutrition and only one-third (35.3%) of the surveys met the criteria for quality. Among the mortality surveys, only 3.2% met the criteria for quality. As nutritional status and mortality rates help indicate the severity of a crisis, the tracking and reporting of these health factors is crucial.

Vital registries are usually the most effective ways to collect data, but in humanitarian contexts these registries can be non-existent, unreliable, or inaccessible. As such, mortality is often inaccurately measured using either prospective demographic surveillance or retrospective mortality surveys. Prospective demographic surveillance requires much manpower and is difficult to implement in a spread-out population. Retrospective mortality surveys are prone to selection and reporting biases. Other methods are being developed, but are not common practice yet.<ref>WHO, [https://www.who.int/topics/epidemiology/en "Health topics: Epidemiology."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200509180559/http://www9.who.int/topics/epidemiology/en/ |date=9 May 2020 }}  Accessed: 30 October 2017.</ref><ref>Miquel Porta.  A Dictionary of Epidemiology. http://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-dictionary-of-epidemiology-9780199976737?cc=us&lang=en {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170711233713/https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-dictionary-of-epidemiology-9780199976737?cc=us&lang=en |date=11 July 2017 }} 6th edition, New York, 2014 Oxford University Press {{ISBN|978-0-19-997673-7}} Accessed: 30 October 2017.</ref><ref>Prudhon, C & Spiegel, P. "A review of methodology and analysis of nutrition and mortality surveys conducted in humanitarian emergencies from October 1993 to April 2004" Emerging Themes in Epidemiology 2007, 4:10. http://www.ete-online.com/content/4/1/10 {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151023194726/http://www.ete-online.com/content/4/1/10 |date=23 October 2015 }} Accessed: 30 October 2017.</ref><ref>Roberts, B et al. "A new method to estimate mortality in crisis-affected and resource-poor settings: validation study." ''International Journal of Epidemiology'' 2010; 39:1584–96. Accessed: 30 October 2017.</ref>