Guidelines for Accurate and Transparent Health Estimates Reporting

Introduction

GATHER promotes best practices in reporting health estimates. A range of health indicators are used to monitor population health and guide resource allocation throughout the world. But the lack of data for some regions and differing measurement methods present challenges that are often addressed by using statistical modeling techniques to generate coherent estimates based on often disparate sources of data.

GATHER is a checklist of 18 items that should be reported every time new global health estimates are published, including descriptions of input data and estimation methods. Developed by a working group convened by the World Health Organization, the guidelines aim to define and promote good practice in reporting health estimates.

Research reported using GATHER will provide key information that allows scientists and decision-makers to evaluate its quality. Detailed explanations of methods will facilitate reproduction of results by researchers anywhere in the world and potentially allow them to make further advances.

GATHER checklist

Who should use GATHER?

Authors of all new publications of health estimates included in GATHER’s scope should use GATHER to ensure that their data and methods are appropriately documented. Authors estimating health indicators that are not within GATHER’s scope may find that the GATHER checklist is a useful guide for documenting data and methods.

What are health estimates?

Health estimates include all quantitative population-level estimates (including global, regional, national, or subnational estimates) of health indicators. GATHER is designed to guide the reporting of estimates of a subset of health indicators: indicators of health status, such as estimates of total and cause-specific mortality and incidence and prevalence of diseases and injuries; and indicators of some proximal health determinants, such as health behaviors and health exposures. Details on the health indicators that are within GATHER’s scope are in the GATHER Statement.

GATHER is designed for studies that calculate health estimates for multiple populations (e.g., over time or space) by combining a variety of information sources. These reporting guidelines do not target reports of a health indicator from a single study or data source, such as a health examination survey.

GATHER Statement

The Guidelines for Accurate and Transparent Health Estimates Reporting (GATHER) define best reporting practices for studies that calculate health estimates. More information on the types of studies covered by GATHER can be found here and in the GATHER Statement.

The GATHER working groups have published three core documents to describe the guidelines and assist authors in complying with the guidelines:

• The GATHER Statement introduces the GATHER checklist and describes the rationale for GATHER’s development and scope. It was published in The Lancet and PLOS Medicine in 2016.

• The GATHER Checklist of 18 items should be reported every time new health estimates are published. Users should refer to the Explanation and Elaboration document for detailed descriptions of the Checklist items and examples of good practice.

• GATHER Explanation and Elaboration describes the interpretation and rationale of each reporting item and gives examples of good reporting. This is a living document that will be updated with clarifications and as new examples of good reporting practice become available.

Please contact us with suggestions for improvement.

Citing GATHER

We recommend citing the Statement published in The Lancet or PLOS Medicine, rather than the GATHER website. GATHER is published under a CC-BY license, which allows unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction of GATHER, provided that the source is cited.

"Stevens GA, Alkema L, Black RE, Boerma JT, Collins GS, Ezzati M, et al. Guidelines for accurate and transparent health estimates reporting: The GATHER statement. Lancet. 2016."
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(16)30388-9

"Stevens GA, Alkema L, Black RE, Boerma JT, Collins GS, Ezzati M, et al. Guidelines for accurate and transparent health estimates reporting: The GATHER statement. PLOS Med.2016."
doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002056

The Statement

Background to GATHER

The GATHER working group was convened by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2014, with the aim to define and promote good practice in reporting health estimates. The working group consists of experts on global health estimates from academia and WHO, journal editors, members of the EQUATOR network (Enhancing the QUAlity and Transparency of health Research), and members of existing guideline steering groups. We reviewed existing reporting guidelines for relevance to health estimates and concluded that available reporting guidelines would not ensure adequate reporting of global health estimates.

Based on the review of existing guidance and reporting guidelines and on input from working group members, we generated a comprehensive list of potential reporting items. We subsequently sought feedback from a broader community of researchers and users of the estimates via an online survey between January and February 2015. The responses were compiled, summarized, and presented at a two-day consensus meeting held in London, United Kingdom, in February 2015.

The primary objective of the working group consensus meeting was to agree on the list of items that should be reported whenever health estimates are published. This list was refined over the course of 2015 and published as part of the GATHER Statement in 2016.

As experience with GATHER accumulates, methods and data evolve, and suggestions for improvements are made, GATHER will need to evolve as well. The Explanation and Elaboration document is a living document that can be updated and clarified as needed. We anticipate that once sufficient experience has accumulated, the GATHER Checklist and Statement will be revised as well.

We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which made GATHER possible.

GATHER Working Group

Leontine Alkema, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Robert Black, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Ties Boerma, World Health Organization
Gary Collins, University of Oxford
Majid Ezzati, Imperial College London
John Grove, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Daniel Hogan, World Health Organization
Margaret Hogan, independent consultant
Richard Horton, The Lancet
Joy Lawn, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine
Ana Marušić, University of Split
Christopher Murray, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington
Igor Rudan, University of Edinburgh
Joshua Salomon, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Paul Simpson, PLOS Medicine
Gretchen Stevens, World Health Organization
Theo Vos, Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, University of Washington
Vivian Welch, Bruyére Continuing Care and University of Ottawa

Endorsement

We encourage journals to endorse GATHER. To endorse GATHER, mention the GATHER Statement and refer to gather-statement.org in the journal’s instructions to authors for reporting of global health estimates.

Additional resources to help journals develop editorial policies around reporting guidelines can be found on the EQUATOR Network website.

We encourage journal editors to write an editorial on the journal’s decision to endorse GATHER.

Journals may also add their name to the list of journal endorsers by contacting us.

GATHER endorsements

• Bulletin of the World Health Organization
• International Journal of Epidemiology
• The Lancet
• PLOS Medicine
• Revista Española de Salud Pública

Contact us

Please contact us by email: [email protected]