Review articleNew challenges for verbal autopsy: Considering the ethical and social implications of verbal autopsy methods in routine health information systems
Section snippets
Background
The importance of population health data to global health efforts is widely recognised and has recently been highlighted by the United Nations' call for a ‘Data Revolution’ and the inclusion of a data, monitoring and accountability target in the new Sustainable Development Goals (IEAG, 2014, United Nations, 2015). Cause-of-death (COD) information is some of the most basic and most essential for estimating the burden of disease, planning health services and deciding research priorities. Ideally,
Methods
Firstly, a review of the VA literature was conducted to identify analyses, guidelines and commentaries on the ethical, legal, social, and cultural implications and considerations for quality VA practice. We examined the literature employing a narrative review approach (Mays et al., 2005), iteratively and reflexively discussing emergent findings among the research team. Several of the authors are members of the Bloomberg CRVS Data for Health Initiative and are currently working closely with
Results/discussion
A total of 839 papers published from 1988 onwards were retrieved from the literature search (Fig. 1). After the removal of duplicates and articles in languages other than English, as well as exclusion of articles that did not engage substantially with the ethical, social, cultural or legal aspects surrounding VA methodology, 61 papers remained Supporting information. A further 11 articles that did not appear in the searches or were present in the grey literature were identified, either through
Conclusion
Today, more than two thirds of deaths that occur globally are still not captured by civil registration systems (Mikkelsen et al., 2015a, Mikkelsen et al., 2015b). In these cases, VA can provide crucial data to inform national decisions about disease prioritisation and health service provision. To date, significant efforts have been employed to ensure that the analytical potential of VAs has been comprehensively explored. Current guidelines and standards for VA implementation, however, were
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Professor Don de Savigny for his comments on earlier drafts of the paper. This work was supported by a National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia project grant; Improving methods to measure comparable mortality by cause (Grant no.631494). RJ is funded by a Future Leader Fellowship funded by the Australian National Heart Foundation (Grant number 100484).
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