The best type of cohort study to use in such a situation would be the bidirectional cohort study. This type of study contains both retrospective and prospective phases. The study would be chosen because it would enable the epidemiologist to look into the past medical history of the town’s residence and whether the health outcomes will continue to worsen. The selected cohort study would be able to factor in the effects that occur soon after exposure and those that are manifested later. The cohort would be closed. This makes it easy to track the members and develop an eligible disease frequency module (Zhang, 1998).
The cohort would be a special exposure cohort because such type of cohort is used when the risk factor is unique to a particular group (McNutt, 2003). In this case, the risk factor of exposure to smoke from the factory is unique to the town’s residents. Past medical records of the cohort members would be obtained from medical facilities and be used for syndromic surveillance. Syndromic surveillance shows the probability of a cause so as to obtain a further health response before a diagnosis is made (Lawson & Kleonman, 2005). A visit to the respiratory departments in medical facilities will also provide information on the level of effects that may have resulted from the inhalation of smoke from the factory. The comparison would be made in relation to the general population and the distance from the toy factory.
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Limitations to the study include a large amount of time it would take to conduct the studies. Cohort studies also require follow-up. Differential loss to follow-up can lead to bias, especially on a prospective study. In the case of the town, it would also be hard to obtain comparative data for the retrospective portion of the cohort study since the data may not have been collected for the purpose of the study. The epidemiologist has to piece together the pieces of data to create a meaningful conclusion (Bailey et al., 2005). Some of these limitations can be circumvented to ensure a more effective cohort study. One way this can be done is by ardent preparation. The finances needed should be available and sufficient for the entirety of the study. Communication channels should also be available to the relevant authorities to obtain past medical records of the town’s residents.
References
Bailey, L., Vardulaki, K., Langham, J., & Chandramohan, D. (2005). Introduction to epidemiology (pp. 97-112). Maidenhead: Open University Press.
Lawson, A.. & Kleinman, K. (2005). Spatial and syndromatic surveillance for public health . Chichester, West Sussex, England: J. Wiley & Sons.
McNutt, L. A., Wu, C., Xue, X., & Hafner, J. P. (2003). Estimating the relative risk in cohort studies and clinical trials of common outcomes. American journal of epidemiology , 157(10), 940-943.
Zhang, J., & Kai, F. Y. (1998). What's the relative risk?: A method of correcting the odds ratio in cohort studies of common outcomes. Jama , 280(19), 1690-1691.
