Featured Publications

• • September 27, 2022 — Trends in female-selective abortion among Asian diasporas in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada and Australia

    Preference for sons and smaller families and, in the case of China, a one-child policy, have contributed to missing girl births in India and China over the last few decades due to sex-selective abortions. Selective abortion occurs also among Indian and Chinese diaspora, but their variability and trends over time are unknown. We examined conditional [...]

  • September 14, 2022 — Mortality Associated with Ambient PM2.5 Exposure in India: Results from the Million Death Study

    Background: Studies on the extent to which long-term exposure to ambient particulate matter (PM) with aerodynamic diameter ≤2.5μm≤2.5μm(PM2.5PM2.5) contributes to adult mortality in India are few, despite over 99% of Indians being exposed to levels that the World Health Organization (WHO) considers unsafe. Objective: We conducted a retrospective cohort study within the Million Death Study (MDS) to [...]

  • May 19, 2022 — Omicron BA.1/1.1 SARS-CoV-2 Infection among Vaccinated Canadian Adults

    The incidence of the omicron BA.1/1.1 variant of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which rapidly spread worldwide even among vaccinated persons, is incompletely defined.1 We quantified the incidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection during the initial omicron BA.1/1.1 variant wave among Canadian adults2 and the contribution of previous infection and concurrent vaccination to age specific [...]

  • May 5, 2022 — Child, Maternal, and Adult Mortality in Sierra Leone: Nationally Representative Mortality Survey 2018-2020

      Background: Sierra Leone’s child and maternal mortality rates are among the highest in the world. Yet little is known about the causes of premature mortality in the country. Methods: The Countrywide Mortality Surveillance for Action platform established the Sierra Leone Sample Registration System (SL-SRS), which involved conducting electronic verbal autopsies in 678 randomly selected villages [...]

  • April 26, 2022 — Identifying the changing age distribution of opioid-related mortality with high-frequency data

    || Lauren A. Paul, Ye Li, Pamela Leece, Tara Gomes, Ahmed M. Bayoumi, Jeremy Herring, Regan Murray, Patrick Brown || Background Opioid-related mortality continues to rise across North America, and mortality rates have been further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This study sought to provide an updated picture of trends of opioid-related mortality for Ontario, Canada between January 2003 and December 2020, [...]

  • April 4, 2022 — Tobacco and nicotine use

    Tobacco and nicotine use Bernard Le Foll, Megan E. Piper, Christie D. Fowler, Serena Tonstad, Laura Bierut, Lin Lu, Prabhat Jha and Wayne D. Hall Abstract | Tobacco smoking is a major determinant of preventable morbidity and mortality worldwide. More than a billion people smoke, and without major increases in cessation, at least half will [...]

  • January 12, 2022 — COVID MORTALITY IN INDIA: NATIONAL SURVEY DATA AND HEALTH FACILITY DEATHS

    India’s national COVID death totals remain undetermined. Using an independent nationally representative survey of 0.14 million (M) adults, we compared COVID mortality during the 2020 and 2021 viral waves to expected all-cause mortality. COVID constituted 29% (95%CI 28-31%) of deaths from June 2020-July 2021, corresponding to 3.2M (3.1-3.4) deaths, of which 2.7M (2.6-2.9) occurred in [...]

  • October 5, 2021 — TRENDS IN MATERNAL MORTALITY IN INDIA OVER TWO DECADES IN NATIONALLY-REPRESENTATIVE SURVEYS

    We analyzed trends in the maternal mortality ratio (MMR) from 1997 through 2020, estimated absolute maternal deaths and examined the causes of maternal death using nationally representative data sources. We estimated that 1.3 million Indian women died from maternal causes over the last two decades. Although maternal mortality rates have fallen by 70% overall, the [...]

  • April 12, 2021 — Trends in missing females at birth in India from 1981 to 2016: analyses of 2·1 million birth histories in nationally representative surveys

    Half of the world’s missing female births occur in India, due to sex-selective abortion. It is unknown whether selective abortion of female fetuses has changed in recent years across different birth orders. We sought to document the trends in missing female births, particularly among second and third children, at national and state levels. Read the [...]

  • July 7, 2020 — Trends in snakebite deaths in India from 2000 to 2019

    Snakebites killed 1.2 million Indians over the last 20 years

  • April 27, 2020 — Is Malaria an Important Cause of Death among Adults?

    A U-shaped mortality age curve can be seen in Indian and African verbal autopsies

  • January 6, 2020 — Health-care investments for the urban populations, Bangladesh and India

    India and Bangladesh need to triple their current health spending to hit SDGs.

  • November 7, 2019 — National Burden Estimates of healthy life lost in India, 2017

    This study quantifies disease burden in Indian using transparent, intuitive, and reproducible methods.

  • June 27, 2019 — Automated versus physician assignment of cause of death for verbal autopsies: randomized trial of 9374 deaths in 117 villages in India

    First ever comparison of automated computer coding of causes of death versus standard physician coding.

  • May 21, 2019 — Lancet Public Health study shows that firearm mortality highest in young men and associated with race and education in the USA, Mexico, Brazil and Colombia

    Firearms remain a leading cause of death in men aged 15-34 years – accounting for 1.4 million deaths

  • March 12, 2019 — Trends in cause-specific mortality among children aged 5-14 years from 2005 to 2016 in India, China, Brazil, and Mexico: an analysis of nationally representative mortality studies.

    Majority of 200,000 deaths in children aged 5 to 14 in India, China, Brazil and Mexico are preventable

  • March 5, 2019 — The impact of measles immunization campaigns in India using a nationally representative sample of 27,000 child deaths

    Continued diligence in mass immunization and direct mortality monitoring are both needed to achieve elimination of measles deaths in India.

  • July 24, 2018 — Mortality attributable to hot and cold ambient temperatures in India: a nationally representative case-crossover study

    Public health interventions to mitigate temperature effects need to focus not only on extremely hot temperatures but also moderately cold temperatures

  • July 13, 2018 — Deaths from cardiovascular disease rising in India, study finds

    Previously unstudied nationally, cardiac mortality is on the rise in India, especially in rural areas and young adults

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