AIDS Forecasting: Undercount of Cases and Lack of Key Data Weaken Existing Estimates
PEMD-89-13
Published: Jun 01, 1989. Publicly Released: Jun 26, 1989.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed 13 existing national forecasts projecting future cumulative numbers of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) cases to identify: (1) prediction variations and uncertainties; (2) types of forecasting models used; (3) the quality of the main types of data used in the models; and (4) a realistic range of estimates for the cumulative number of AIDS cases through 1991.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Department of Health and Human Services | The Secretary of Health and Human Services should require the Director, CDC, to conduct rigorous national studies of the net effect of biases in the national AIDS surveillance data to improve national estimates of the current and projected size of the epidemic. |
Closed – Implemented
The Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) studies have not been used to improve estimates of AIDS cases.
|
| Department of Health and Human Services | The Secretary of Health and Human Services should require the Director, CDC, to assess whether the CDC Surveillance Branch for tracking cases of AIDS and HIV-related diseases has sufficient staff and resources to plan, monitor, review, and disseminate such studies to the AIDS research community and forecasting models. |
Closed – Implemented
The agency concurs with the recommendation. Full-time equivalent staff members increased to 24 from 17, but 2 positions have not yet been filled.
|
| Department of Health and Human Services | The Secretary of Health and Human Services should require the Director, CDC, to incorporate additional information on risk-group membership into the CDC public use data set. |
Closed – Implemented
The agency concurs with the recommendation. CDC is reviewing plans for expanding information on risk-group membership that is available for public use. Some improvements were made.
|
| Department of Health and Human Services | The Secretary of Health and Human Services should review existing and ongoing empirical studies of individual risk-group behaviors as well as of HIV transmission and the current level of HIV infection to determine where additional data are most needed. |
Closed – Not Implemented
This recommendation was not addressed by HHS in its response to the committee. The agency now says its lack of response was due to confusion about who within HHS was supposed to respond.
|
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Topics
AIDSComputer modelingData integrityDisease detection or diagnosisstate relationsHealth surveysMedical researchProjectionsStatistical methodsPublic health