Citation
Westreich, Daniel; Edwards, Jessie K.; Rogawski, Elizabeth T.; Hudgens, Michael G.; Stuart, Elizabeth A.; & Cole, Stephen R. (2016). Causal Impact: Epidemiological Approaches for a Public Health of Consequence. American Journal of Public Health, 106(6), 1011-1012. PMCID: PMC4880276Abstract
The causal impact framework is a conceptual framework encompassing internal validity, external validity, and population intervention effects, which we argue can help us produce evidence of greater utility to public health decision-making. To improve the health of a population, public health research should consider factors that can be changed, particularly exposures that are potential targets of intervention. Thus, useful public health research will focus on identifying causes of health and disease, rather than simply associated risk factors. Such causal public health (and clinical) research designs generally focus on ensuring internal validity1: generating an accurate estimate of a causal effect for the people in the study, such as obtained from a double-masked randomized controlled trial with no loss to follow-up. In such a trial setting, we are typically interested in contrasting two exposure distributions: (1) what if everyone were assigned to the experimental treatment, and (2) what if everyone were assigned to the comparison treatment?URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.2105/ajph.2016.303226Reference Type
Journal ArticleYear Published
2016Journal Title
American Journal of Public HealthAuthor(s)
Westreich, DanielEdwards, Jessie K.
Rogawski, Elizabeth T.
Hudgens, Michael G.
Stuart, Elizabeth A.
Cole, Stephen R.