Robust Estimation methods to evaluate Health Disparities

Our recent article (with lead author Ashley Naimi) describes the usage of causal mediation methods to evaluate potential interventions to reduce health disparities between racial groups in the US. In this article, Dr. Naimi describes how elevated non-Hispanic Black infant mortality rates can be largely (but not entirely) explained by lower rates of breastfeeding prior to hospital discharge. However, the importance of this potential intervention is seemingly overestimated using standard regression methods compared to double robust approaches.

I was happy to participate in this very interesting project, which is currently in press at the American Journal of Epidemiology.