Epidemiologic Data Measurements

Frequency
 Refers to HOW a disease, injury or death is
being measured
Frequency Measures:
Prevalence
Ratios
 Point prevalence
 Shows the relationship between 2 quantities
 Proportion of persons who have a condition
 One interval or ratio scale variable to
during a particular time
another
 Includes both new and pre-existing cases
a
k
Incidence b
 Incident cases EXAMPLE: Sex Ratio, hospital population or death
 Transition from well to ill to case ratio
 Limited to new cases only
Proportions
TWO TYPES:
 Special type of ratio
Incidence proportion  Compare part to the whole
 As decimal, fraction, or %
 Risk / Attack rate
a
Number of new cases of disease∨injury during specified period
a+b
¿ population at start of period
EXAMPLE: Fraction of lab patients (+) for STD
Incidence rate
Proportionate Mortality
 Person-time rate
 Incorporates time directly into the  specific type of epidemiologic proportion
denominator ¿
Number of deaths ¿ a specific cause all causes¿
Number of new cases of disease∨injury during specified period Total deaths ¿
Time each person was observed , totaled for all persons
Rates
Risk  Most common measure of disease frequency
 Incidence proportion  A special type of ratio where numerator is
 Persons unaffected at the beginning but related to the denominator and a measure of
experience a risk event during the study time is considered part of the denominator
period  Events in a defined time period
 Proportion of initially disease-free  Useful for comparing disease frequency in
population that develops a condition over a different locations, at different times, or
period of time among different groups
 Is a measure of risk
New cases
Number of persons∈the population at the start of EXAMPLE: Mortality Rate
the observation of the observation period
Mortality Rate
 Risk = Proportion
 Number of death during a specified period
Since all the new cases in the numerator are
by the number of persons at risk of dying
also represented in the denominator
during the period and further dividing the
 Epidemiologic Data Measurements
result by the length of time of this period  Proportion of population that develops
illness during an outbreak

Rates
 Events in a defined time period
Prevalence rate
 Useful for comparing disease frequency in
different locations, at different times, or  Proportion of population that has a health
among different groups condition at a point in time
 Is a measure of risk
Case-fatality rate
Good estimate of risk if:
 Proportion of persons with the disease who
– Event in the numerator occurs only once die from it
– % of people affected is small
– Time interval is short
Remember!
If the % of the population is larger or the time
interval is longer , the RATE will be larger than the
RISK
If the event in the numerator will happen more than
once, INCIDENSE DENSITY will be used instead
of the Rate.
Epidemic
 means a disease or condition affecting a ¿
greater than expected number of individuals number of deaths¿ specific cause
number of cases of same sp
within population , community, regions, at
the same time
Endemic Summary

 is when there is normal occurrence of the  There are several data for epidemiologic
disease in the population studies of public health.
 These are collected by different government
Pandemic and private agencies and are usually made
 happens when the disease or conditions is available publicly
geographically widespread  Prevalence data are determined by surveys.
These data are used to create rates and ratios
In epidemics, rates are used in proportions with and are used for health planning
case counts  Rate must meet a certain criteria with
¿ populations respect to the denominator and the
Attack rate or incidence proportion numerator.