Statistical Considerations—Applications SMRFIT: A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS SYSTEM (SAS) PROGRAM FOR STANDARDIZED MORTALITY RATIO ANALYSES AND POISSON REGRESSION MODEL FITS IN COMMUNITY DISEASE CLUSTER INVESTIGATIONS

(SAS) program for standardized mortality ratio analyses and Poisson regression model fits In community disease cluster investigations. Am J Epidemiol 1990;132:S116-S122. Increasingly, health departments are being pressed by the public to respond to disease risk with cluster investigations in communities and neighborhoods. This Is a direct result of growing concern about the role that the environment may play in disease risk. While extensive analyses directly Inputing exposures or numbers at risk are often necessary to thoroughly investigate clusters, it is quite useful to perform an exploratory analysis with existing morbidity and mortality data as a first level of response. To meet this need for timely evaluation, the authors describe a user-friendly Statistical Analysis System (SAS) program called SMRRT to automate community disease cluster evaluations. The program creates frequency tables for number at risk and number of disease outcomes for the community, balance of parent county, and balance of state. SMRRT then con-structs standardized mortality ratios, with the community compared with balanc