Software development

Our research team has developed a suite of R packages that significantly enhance the capabilities of researchers and public health professionals. These tools are designed to facilitate advanced statistical analyses with a focus on accessibility and practical application.

• We have been working on SUMMER package since 2017 – focuses mostly on mortality estimation.
• surveyPrev (Richard, Qianyu, Yunhan, Andrea, Jon) is on CRAN and allows SAE for binary indicators.
• Experience from UN and WHO workshops in Ecuador, South Africa, Malawi, and Rwanda is that researchers need a more user-friendly interface – to this end, a R Shiny app has been developed by Yunhan and was premiered in a WHO workshop in Rwanda June 2024.
• U5MR and fertility are hard because the data model is complex – can be done in SUMMER.
• With Ben Mayala, Yunhan, Richard, Jon, and others, created a pipeline for U5MR using DHS data and SUMMER.
• R survey package now has a generic SAE module thanks to Peter Gao and others.