D'Ambruoso, Lucia;
Price, Jessica;
Cowan, Eilidh;
Goosen, Gerhard;
Fottrell, Edward;
Herbst, Kobus;
van der Merwe, Maria;
... Kahn, Kathleen; + view all
(2022)
Refining circumstances of mortality categories (COMCAT): a verbal autopsy model connecting circumstances of deaths with outcomes for public health decision-making.
Glob Health Action
, 14
(sup1)
, Article 2000091. 10.1080/16549716.2021.2000091.
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Abstract
BACKGROUND: Recognising that the causes of over half the world's deaths pass unrecorded, the World Health Organization (WHO) leads development of Verbal Autopsy (VA): a method to understand causes of death in otherwise unregistered populations. Recently, VA has been developed for use outside research environments, supporting countries and communities to recognise and act on their own health priorities. We developed the Circumstances of Mortality Categories (COMCATs) system within VA to provide complementary circumstantial categorisations of deaths. OBJECTIVES: Refine the COMCAT system to (a) support large-scale population assessment and (b) inform public health decision-making. METHODS: We analysed VA data for 7,980 deaths from two South African Health and Socio-Demographic Surveillance Systems (HDSS) from 2012 to 2019: the Agincourt HDSS in Mpumalanga and the Africa Health Research Institute HDSS in KwaZulu-Natal. We assessed the COMCAT system's reliability (consistency over time and similar conditions), validity (the extent to which COMCATs capture a sufficient range of key circumstances and events at and around time of death) and relevance (for public health decision-making). RESULTS: Plausible results were reliably produced, with 'emergencies', 'recognition, 'accessing care' and 'perceived quality' characterising the majority of avoidable deaths. We identified gaps and developed an additional COMCAT 'referral', which accounted for a significant proportion of deaths in sub-group analysis. To support decision-making, data that establish an impetus for action, that can be operationalised into interventions and that capture deaths outside facilities are important. CONCLUSIONS: COMCAT is a pragmatic, scalable approach enhancing functionality of VA providing basic information, not available from other sources, on care seeking and utilisation at and around time of death. Continued development with stakeholders in health systems, civil registration, community and research environments will further strengthen the tool to capture social and health systems drivers of avoidable deaths and promote use in practice settings.
| Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Title: | Refining circumstances of mortality categories (COMCAT): a verbal autopsy model connecting circumstances of deaths with outcomes for public health decision-making |
| Location: | United States |
| Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
| DOI: | 10.1080/16549716.2021.2000091 |
| Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1080/16549716.2021.2000091 |
| Language: | English |
| Additional information: | © 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
| Keywords: | Causes of death, South Africa, circumstances of mortality, verbal autopsy |
| UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Population Health Sciences > Institute for Global Health UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences |
| URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10146783 |
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