PD16 ‐ Prevalence of childhood food allergy in Canada: a focus on under‐represented populations
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Studies suggest individuals of low socioeconomic status (SES), immigrants, and Aboriginal peoples, may have fewer food allergies than the general population. However, given the difficulty in recruiting such populations using conventional survey methodologies, the prevalence of food allergy among these populations in Canada has not been estimated. To compare the prevalence of food allergies among children from low-income, immigrant and Aboriginal populations to children from the general Canadian population. Using 2006 Canadian Census data, postal codes with high proportions of low-income, immigrant, and Aboriginal populations were extracted and households randomly selected to participate in a telephone survey. Information on food allergies and demographic data was collected for all children (defined as below 18 years of age). Food allergy was defined according to self-report. Prevalence estimates were weighted using Census data to account for our targeted sampling. Between September 2010 and September 2011, 12,747 households were contacted to complete the survey, of which 6,403 responded (50.2% response rate), representing 3,271 children. Among all children, the prevalence of allergy to any food was 7.49% (95% Confidence Interval (CI), 5.93, 9.05). Children born in Canada had considerably more food allergies than those born elsewhere [7.96% (95% CI, 6.24, 9.68) versus 3.26% (95% CI, 1.46, 5.07)]. The prevalence was higher for children residing in households above the low income cut-off (LICO) than below the LICO [7.81% (95% CI, 5.48, 10.14) versus 6.24% (95%CI, 4.12, 8.36)], and for children with versus without Aboriginal ancestry [7.62% (95% CI, 5.98, 9.26) versus 6.03% (95% CI, 1.30, 10.76)]; however, these differences were not statistically significant due to overlapping confidence intervals. Our study found that immigrant children experience fewer food allergies than Canadian-born children. Although the data suggest a trend towards a lower prevalence of food allergy among low-income and Aboriginal children, wide confidence intervals preclude definitive conclusions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.005 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".