[01] Marina Roshini Sooriyarachchi, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, Colombo 3, Sri Lanka. [02] Linali Pathiratne, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, Colombo 3, Sri Lanka. [03] Peshala Madhubani, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, Colombo 3, Sri Lanka. [04] Waruni Abeysekera, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, Colombo 3, Sri Lanka. [05] Udeni de Silva, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, Colombo 3, Sri Lanka. [06] Gayani Ratnayake, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, Colombo 3, Sri Lanka. [07] Sulakshana Perera, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, Colombo 3, Sri Lanka. [08] Nishika Ranatunge, Department of Statistics, Faculty of Science, University of Colombo, Colombo 3, Sri Lanka.

The use of statistics and analytic techniques in public health research is of vital importance and has led to important applications in the wide area of public health. Some examples of such studies in which we have been involved in include; Economic, social and environmental determinants contributing to life expectancy, Building of an Automated Statistical Information system for diagnosis and determining prognosis of life threatening viral diseases and application to Japanese Encephalitis, Multivariate multilevel modeling of diabetes/cardiovascular diseases and respiratory diseases. These and more studies will be discussed in detail, emphasizing the scope for Statistical modeling in Public Health Data. Different types of statistical models will be discussed briefly explaining the objective and the use of using the particular model. The results given by the model will be interpreted and shown how the results satisfy the objectives of the problem. These studies will be of interest to public health personal, epidemiologists and medical statisticians who are usually involved in the planning, operational and analysis stage of such studies. These studies represent developing countries where the budgets are generally low leading to relatively small sample sizes. The techniques used range from simple to advanced forms of modeling dependent upon the design and type of response/responses in the study.

Public Health, Case Studies, Statistical Analysis, WHO

[01] Workshop on Statistics in Public Health, Kolkota, India (2016) https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/14c34c9cf18a281e. [02] Linali Pathiratne and M. R. Sooriyarachchi, Factors Affecting Life Expectancy: A Global Perspective. Journal of Environment Protection and Sustainable Development. In Press. [03] Peshala Madhubani and M. R. Sooriyarachchi (2013), Model to Identify the Affect of Water Quality Parameters on Incidence of Hepatitis. International Journal of Earth Sciences and Engineering 6 (4): 751 – 756. [04] W. W. M. Abeysekera, Roshini Sooriyarachchi (2008), A NOVEL METHOD FOR TESTING GOODNESS OF FIT OF A PROPORTIONAL ODDS MODEL: AN APPLICATION TO AN AIDS STUDY 36 (2): 125 – 135. [05] Collett, D. (2003). Modeling Survival Data in Medical Research. New York: Chapman & Hall/CRC. [06] De Silva, D. and Sooriyarachchi, M. R., 2012. Generalized Linear Multilevel Models for Ordinal Categorical Responses: Methods and Application to Medical Data. Sri Lankan Journal of Applied Statistics, 12, pp. 83–99 [07] Browne, W. J. 2009 MCMC Estimation in MLwiN v2.10. Centre for Multilevel Modeling, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK. [08] Rathnayake, G. I. and Sooriyarachchi, M. R., 2014. Automated Statistical Information System (ASIS) for Diagnosis and Prognosis of Life-threatening Viral Diseases. Sri Lankan Journal of Applied Statistics, 15 (3), pp. 185–210. DOI: http://doi.org/10.4038/sljastats.v15i3.7796. [09] Raghunathan, T. E., Lepkowski, J. M., Van Hoewyk, J., & Solenberger, P. (2001). A Multivariate Technique for Multiply Imputing Missing Values Using a Sequence of Regression Models. Survey Methodology, Statistics Canada, 27 (1), 85-95. [10] Peiris, J. S., Amerasinghe, F. P., Amerasinghe, P. H., Rathnayake, C. B., Karunaratne, S. H., & Tsai, T. F. (1992). Japanese encephalitis in Sri Lanka--the study of an epidemic: vector incrimination, porcine infection and human disease. PubMed, 86 (3), 307-313. [11] Water Sanitation and Health (WSH). (2011). Retrieved 2011, from WHO: http://www.who.int/http://www.who.int/water_sanitation_health/diseases/encephalitis/en//diseases/encephalitis/en/. [12] Sulakshana Perera (2011). Reproduction and child mortality. Unpublished B.Sc. Thesis. [13] K. M. D. S. D. Karunaratne and M. R. Sooriyarachchi (2013). Factors Associated with the fertility of Sri Lankan women. Annual Research Symposium, 2013 Faculty of Science, University of Colombo. [14] KapurugeNishikaOshadiniRanathunga and M. R. Sooriyarachchi (2017), A study of the effect of water quality related variables on some age related diseases adjusted for other well-known risk factors: a multivariate multilevel study. JWSHD, Open Access. [15] www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2016/deaths-attributable-to-unhealthy-environments/en/. Retrieved on 19.02.2017.