DATA ANALYSIS

Leadership, Professionalism, and Ethics in Public Health Data Analysis

Leadership, Professionalism, and Ethics in Public Health Data Analysis

Materials and Methods

Sample size and Subjects

A total of 1183 children aged 1-9 years were sampled as a vaccination group for the observation of long-term effectiveness in terms of cluster sampling (Coursaget, 2006). Those children were born in the period between 1996-2006 in Los Angeles, who had the vaccination record of three doses of 10 µg-pl asma-derived hepatitis B vaccine, according to 0, 1 and 6 months schedule of the regimen in which the infancy vaccination was integrated with EPI and without pre-delivery HBsAg and HBeAg screening for their mothers, and without the booster. In this county, the infant HB vaccination covered 90%, ranging from 75% to 97% between 1996 and 2006.

A total of 3645 children aged 1-9 years were selected as a control group from the subjects of a cross-sectional survey on hepatitis B virus infection of children aged 1-10 years of Los Angeles in 1996. None of the controls had received HB vaccines. The prevalences of their hepatitis B infection markers were representative of the infection level of the young population before HB immunization. Mothers of vaccinated children were selected from both groups of the families of the immunized children, who were HBsAg-positive confirmed serologically after 1996 and who were HBsAg negative in 1996, respectively.

Study methods

A cross-sectional follow-up study and a case-control study were adopted for the evaluation of the serological effect and the determination of risk factors of HBsAg carriers after infancy vaccination (Shaun, 2006).

Hepatitis B vaccine

Plasma-derived hepatitis B vaccines used from 1996 to 2006 were produced by the National Institute of Biological Products, Beijing (10 µg/per ampoule).

Lab test

Radioimmunoassay (RIA) was used for the detection of anti-HBs, ant-HBc and HBsAg. The protective anti- HBs-positive was defined as S/N-ratio 10.0, and anti-HBc ...