Using compartmental models to simulate directed acyclic graphs to explore competing causal mechanisms underlying epidemiological study data

Accurately estimating the effect of an exposure on an outcome requires understanding how variables relevant to a study question are causally related to each other. Directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) are used in epidemiology to understand causal processes and determine appropriate statistical approaches to obtain unbiased measures of effect. Compartmental models (CMs) are also used to represent different causal mechanisms, by depicting flows between...