The Partial Least Squares Spline Model for Public Health Surveillance Data

Abstract

Factor discovery of public health surveillance data is a crucial problem and extremely challenging from a scientific viewpoint with enormous applications in research studies. In this study, the main focus is to introduce the improved survival regression technique in the presence of multicollinearity, and hence, the partial least squares spline modeling approach is proposed. The proposed method is compared with the benchmark partial least squares Cox regression model in terms of accuracy based on the Akaike information criterion. Further, the optimal model is practiced on a real data set of infant mortality obtained from the Pakistan Demographic and Health Survey. This model is implemented to assess the significant risk factors of infant mortality. The recommended features contain key information about infant survival and could be useful in public health surveillance-related research.