Linked Exposures Across Databases: an exposure common data elements aggregation framework to facilitate clinical exposure review

Front Public Health. 2024 Jun 28:12:1408222. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2024.1408222. eCollection 2024.

Abstract

Understanding the health outcomes of military exposures is of critical importance for Veterans, their health care team, and national leaders. Approximately 43% of Veterans report military exposure concerns to their VA providers. Understanding the causal influences of environmental exposures on health is a complex exposure science task and often requires interpreting multiple data sources; particularly when exposure pathways and multi-exposure interactions are ill-defined, as is the case for complex and emerging military service exposures. Thus, there is a need to standardize clinically meaningful exposure metrics from different data sources to guide clinicians and researchers with a consistent model for investigating and communicating exposure risk profiles. The Linked Exposures Across Databases (LEAD) framework provides a unifying model for characterizing exposures from different exposure databases with a focus on providing clinically relevant exposure metrics. Application of LEAD is demonstrated through comparison of different military exposure data sources: Veteran Military Occupational and Environmental Exposure Assessment Tool (VMOAT), Individual Longitudinal Exposure Record (ILER) database, and a military incident report database, the Explosive Ordnance Disposal Information Management System (EODIMS). This cohesive method for evaluating military exposures leverages established information with new sources of data and has the potential to influence how military exposure data is integrated into exposure health care and investigational models.

Keywords: data aggregation; dose; exposure common data elements; exposure model; military exposures.

MeSH terms

  • Common Data Elements
  • Databases, Factual*
  • Environmental Exposure*
  • Humans
  • Military Personnel* / statistics & numerical data
  • Occupational Exposure
  • United States
  • Veterans / statistics & numerical data

Grants and funding

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.