Validity of Expanded Program on Immunization Contact Method health behavior estimates in Mali.

Area of Science:

• Global Health
• Public Health Surveillance
• Health Behavior Research

Background:

• Household surveys are crucial for collecting health behavior data in developing nations.
• The Expanded Program on Immunization Contact Method (EPI-CM) offers a potentially less resource-intensive alternative for data collection.
• The validity of EPI-CM compared to standard methods has not been systematically evaluated.

Purpose of the Study:

• To evaluate the validity of the EPI-CM for collecting infant health behavior data.
• To compare EPI-CM data with concurrent household survey data in Mali.
• To assess the reliability of EPI-CM for key infant health behaviors.

Main Methods:

• Concurrent data collection using household surveys and EPI-CM in Mali.
• Focus on four infant health behaviors: bednet use, fever care, respiratory complaint care, and oral rehydration solution use.
• Equivalence defined as a 95% confidence interval for the difference in proportions falling within (-0.10, 0.10).

Main Results:

• EPI-CM yielded higher estimates than household surveys for 7 out of 8 comparisons.
• Only bednet use estimates in 2009 met equivalence criteria, in a context of high usage.
• Restricting household survey data to vaccinated infants did not improve comparability for most behaviors.

Conclusions:

• The study could not establish that EPI-CM consistently generates data comparable to household surveys.
• The implemented EPI-CM method requires further refinement and validation.
• Current findings suggest limitations in using EPI-CM for reliable health behavior surveillance.