What is the risk assessment tool?
The risk assessment tool detects areas not meeting the programmatic targets to sustain measles and rubella elimination. With these results, the country can prioritize the areas for intervention, to close the identified gaps in vaccination and epidemiological surveillance. It is recommended that the analysis unit of the risk assessment tool be the municipality, district or its equivalent.
There are two versions of the tool: for outbreak and non-outbreak scenarios. The tool is available in the four PAHO languages: English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish.
How has the risk been calculated?
Overall, the risk was assessed as the sum of indicator scores that fall into five main categories: population immunity, surveillance quality, program delivery performance, threat probability assessment, and rapid response. Total risk points range from 0 to 100 points.
The category of population immunity received the greatest proportion of total possible risk points (40%), followed by case-based surveillance quality (20%), program delivery performance (16%), threat probability assessment (12%), and rapid response to imported cases (12%).
The tool assigns each municipality a risk of either low, medium, high, or very high based on the risk score. Table 1 shows the fixed cut-off points established for the risk classification of each municipality. The following risk matrix presents the categories, indicators, scoring, and formulas for the outbreak and non-outbreak scenarios. Risk categories are defined by the 25th, 50th, and 75th percentiles.
What are the formats of the risk assessment tool?
The risk assessment tool is available in Excel and in R programming language. For both versions, the results are the same, displayed in a country report.
The tool in the R language programming tool generates an interactive dashboard, as well as a quality assessment of the data compiled and entered into the tool. These two functionalities are not available in the Excel version.
For the R version, we developed a tutorial video comprised by eight modules. Each module is independent and there is no need to watch them consecutively.
What is needed to run the risk assessment tool?
To run the risk tool, the country will need the following three files:
Maps or shapefiles, ideally disaggregated by municipality;
Data on vaccination coverage, attrition rate, case-by-case surveillance, rapid response, among others (provided in an Excel file); and
An image of the country's flag
If you have any doubts, questions or comments, please send an email to vpdrisktool@paho.org, We will get back to you as soon as possible (usually within 24 hours).
