Health SPHere

Alumni magazine of the Boston University School of Public Healt

Innovations in Public Health: Understanding State Public Health

Provides an overview of state public health services -- services provided and outsourced, organizational and accountability structures, and key statutes -- and offers a framework for exploring the scope of the state's role and responsibilities

Matching Methods for Causal Inference: A Review and a Look Forward

When estimating causal effects using observational data, it is desirable to replicate a randomized experiment as closely as possible by obtaining treated and control groups with similar covariate distributions. This goal can often be achieved by choosing well-matched samples of the original treated and control groups, thereby reducing bias due to the covariates. Since the 1970s, work on matching methods has examined how to best choose treated and control subjects for comparison. Matching methods are gaining popularity in fields such as economics, epidemiology, medicine and political science. However, until now the literature and related advice has been scattered across disciplines. Researchers who are interested in using matching methods---or developing methods related to matching---do not have a single place to turn to learn about past and current research. This paper provides a structure for thinking about matching methods and guidance on their use, coalescing the existing research (both old and new) and providing a summary of where the literature on matching methods is now and where it should be headed.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/09-STS313 the Statistical Science (http://www.imstat.org/sts/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

Public health in Calcutta

'Wellcome History' is an easy and regular channel of communication between all Wellcome historians. It aims to be an informal, user-friendly centre of debate

Health SPHere

Alumni magazine of the Boston University School of Public Healt

Counterfeiting and Public Health

*** This material is copyrighted and any download is for personal use only *** The original article is published in Criminal Enforcement of Intellectual Property: A Handbook of Contemporary Research edited by Christophe Geiger © 2012 Edward Elgar