Research Conducted at University of Michigan School of Public Health Has Updated Our Knowledge about Risk Management (Linking Decision Theory and Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment: Tradeoffs Between Compliance and Efficacy for Waterborne …)

2019 OCT 02 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Research findings on Risk Management are discussed in a new report. According to news reporting out of Ann Arbor, Michigan, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “Achieving health gains from the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals of universal coverage for water and sanitation will require interventions that can be widely adopted and maintained.”

Financial support for this research came from National Institute of General Medical Sciences.

Our news journalists obtained a quote from the research from the University of Michigan School of Public Health, “Effectiveness-how an intervention performs based on actual use-as opposed to efficacy will therefore be central to evaluations of new and existing interventions. Incomplete compliance-when people do not always use the intervention and are therefore exposed to contamination-is thought to be responsible for the lower-than-expected risk reductions observed from water, sanitation, and hygiene interventions based on their efficacy at removing pathogens. We explicitly incorporated decision theory into a quantitative microbial risk assessment model. Specifically, we assume that the usability of household water treatment (HWT) devices (filters and chlorine) decreases as they become more efficacious due to issues such as taste or flow rates. Simulations were run to examine the tradeoff between device efficacy and usability. For most situations, HWT interventions that trade lower efficacy (i.e., remove less pathogens) for higher compliance (i.e., better usability) contribute substantial reductions in diarrheal disease risk compared to devices meeting current World Health Organization efficacy guidelines.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “Recommendations that take into account both the behavioral and microbiological properties of treatment devices are likely to be more effective at reducing the burden of diarrheal disease than current standards that only consider efficacy.”

For more information on this research see: Linking Decision Theory and Quantitative Microbial Risk Assessment: Tradeoffs Between Compliance and Efficacy for Waterborne Disease Interventions. Risk Analysis, 2019;():. Risk Analysis can be contacted at: Blackwell Publishing Inc, 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA. (Wiley-Blackwell - http://www.wiley.com/; Risk Analysis - http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1539-6924)

Our news journalists report that additional information may be obtained by contacting M.A.L. Hayashi, Dept. of Epidemiology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI, United States. Additional authors for this research include M.C. Eisenberg and J.NS Eisenberg.

The direct object identifier (DOI) for that additional information is: https://doi.org/10.1111/risa.13381. This DOI is a link to an online electronic document that is either free or for purchase, and can be your direct source for a journal article and its citation.

Publisher contact information for the journal Risk Analysis is: Blackwell Publishing Inc, 350 Main St, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

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