Tanja Srebotnjak, Senior Fellow at Ecologic Institute, with co-authors Professor Christopher Murray and Professor Ali Mokdad from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington in Seattle, USA, published a methods paper in Population Health Metrics on small area estimation.

In their work, the authors developed a new approach for the systematic validation and application of small area estimation techniques that can lead to more accurate and precise estimates of characteristics such as the prevalence of diseases and their risk factors. Since the majority of health care services are delivered at the local level, it is important for public health officials to have timely and accurate information at hand to develop, implement and monitor interventions. While the authors demonstrated the benefits of the new framework using US county data on Type 2 diabetes, but potential fields of application extend beyond the US and diabetes prevalence and may include environmental risk factors and health outcomes such as asthma. The work was supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the State of Washington. The paper is available for download.