Best practices in ranking communicable disease threats: a literature review, 2015

Abstract

The threat of serious, cross-border communicable disease outbreaks in Europe poses a significant challenge to public health and emergency preparedness because the relative likelihood of these threats and the pathogens involved are constantly shifting in response to a range of changing disease drivers. To inform strategic planning by enabling effective resource allocation to manage the consequences of communicable disease outbreaks, it is useful to be able to rank and prioritise pathogens. This paper reports on a literature review which identifies and evaluates the range of methods used for risk ranking. Searches were performed across biomedical and grey literature databases, supplemented by reference harvesting and citation tracking. Studies were selected using transparent inclusion criteria and underwent quality appraisal using a bespoke checklist based on the AGREE II criteria. Seventeen studies were included in the review, covering five methodologies. A narrative analysis of the selected studies suggests that no single methodology was superior. However, many of the methods shared common components, around which a 'best-practice' framework was formulated. This approach is intended to help inform decision makers' choice of an appropriate risk-ranking study design.

Prioritizing of bacterial infections transmitted through substances of human origin in Europe

“…An elicitation of scientific and technical judgments from experts for infectious disease prioritization has been pursued via numerous methods, including Delphi process and MCDA, in countries such as the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden . A systematic analysis of best practices in prioritizing infectious disease risks identified MCDA as offering a particularly robust methodologic approach, and this method enabled the prioritization presented here. Sourcing expert opinion does have analytical limitations.…”

“…The composition of the expert group offers a potential source of bias. Ensuring broad geographical representation and multidisciplinary membership of expert panels are among the recommendations in the ECDC best practices framework . Although the group that participated in this workshop was relatively small, bias was mitigated by including participants from multiple European countries and representing expertise in blood transfusion, cells and tissues, organ transplantation, and bacteriology.…”

Virulence factor activity relationships (VFARs): a bioinformatics perspective

“…104 A review by O'Brien and co-authors examined five prioritization methodologies (Delphi, bibliometrics, qualitative algorithm, multi-criteria decision analysis, and questionnaire studies) described in 17 published studies for ranking communicable disease threats. 105 The authors concluded that no method is superior, but observed that common practices in all methods could be employed in a superior manner.…”

Prioritizing Zoonoses for Global Health Capacity Building—Themes from One Health Zoonotic Disease Workshops in 7 Countries, 2014–2016

“…However, in low-resource settings, capacity-building efforts should be initially focused on a few key diseases (22). Disease prioritization enables effective capacity building and resource allocation to increase surveillance, guide research, and improve preparedness and response protocols, further advancing global health security and the international health regulations (23)(24)(25).…”