MATERIALS AND METHODS

We developed a search algorithm to identify the published literature concerning the health impacts of flood events. A search was made of the BIDS (Bath Information and Data Services, Bath, United Kingdom), CAB Abstracts (Commonwealth Agricultural Bureau International, Wallingford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom), PsychInfo (American Psychological Association, Washington, DC), Embase (Elsevier BV, Amsterdam, the Netherlands), and Medline/PubMed (National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, Maryland) reference databases using combinations of terms for flooding and selected health outcomes as terms in the title, keywords, or abstract (figure 1). Terms from Medical Subject Headings (MeSH; National Library of Medicine) were used where relevant. We excluded papers that addressed only population displacement, economic losses, and disruption of food supplies. The search found 3,833 references, of which 212 were identified as epidemiologic studies from review of the abstract and/or title. The scientific quality of these papers was assessed on a case-by-case basis. In drawing inferences, we made no exclusions from these 212, but we gave greatest weight to studies based on epidemiologic designs with controlled comparisons. We report and reference the main findings in this review.