Introducing the Descriptive Framework for Assessing Epidemiological Cross-National Transferability: Application to Extrapolating Pediatric Life-Limiting Condition Prevalence Between Two European Countries.

BACKGROUND

The transfer of epidemiological parameters, such as prevalence, between nations with limited data is a common but unstructured process. Determining how pediatric life-limiting condition (LLC) prevalence rates from one country can be applied to another country is unclear.

OBJECTIVES

This study introduces the Descriptive Framework for Assessing Epidemiological Cross-National Transferability (FACT), a five-step approach to systematically validate and execute the transfer of epidemiological prevalence estimates.

DESIGN

Using the established epidemiological work by Fraser et al., the framework was applied to determine LLC prevalences in Germany (the use case).

MEASUREMENTS: Official population statistics from England and Germany were adjusted for gender and age. Results revealed that many comparative indicators were similar, deviating <2.5/5 percentage (points), supporting the transfer of English pediatric LLC prevalences to Germany.

RESULTS

The transfer resulted in an estimated number of 103,566 (65.30 per 10,000) German children and adolescents affected by life-shortening diseases in 2022, with projections between 107,934 and 138,817 by 2030.

CONCLUSIONS

FACT demonstrates significant utility in transferring prevalence figures and is likely applicable to other epidemiological measures, such as incidence.