MMWRAssignment
Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) Assignment Procedure
THEORY:
Epidemiology is the study of the causes, occurrence, transmission, distribution, and prevention of diseases in a population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA, is the national clearinghouse for epidemiological data. The CDC receives reports related to the occurrence of 35 notifiable diseases (Table 7-5) from the United States and its territories, and compiles the data into tabular form, available in the publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). Two important disease measures that epidemiologists collect are morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death). Morbidity relative to a specific disease is the number of susceptible people who have the disease within a defined population during a specific time period. It usually is expressed as a rate. Because population size fluctuates constantly, it is conventional to use the population size at the midpoint of the study period. Also, the units for the rate fraction are “cases per person” and usually are small decimal fractions. To make the calculated rate more “user-friendly”, it is multiplied by some power of 10 (“K”) to achieve a value that is a whole number. Thus, a morbidity rate of 0.00002 is multiplied by 100,000 (105) so it can be reported as 2 cases per 100,000 people rather than 0.00002 cases per person. Morbidity rate is calculated using the following equation:
Mortality, also expressed as a rate, is the number of people who die from a specific disease out of the total population afflicted with that disease in a specified time period. It, too, is multiplied by a factor “K” so the rate can be reported as a whole number of cases. The equations is:
Minimally, an epidemiological study evaluates morbidity or mortality data in terms of person (age, sex, race, etc.), place, and time. Sophisticated analyses require training in biostatistics, but the simple epidemiological calculation you will
THEORY:
Epidemiology is the study of the causes, occurrence, transmission, distribution, and prevention of diseases in a population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA, is the national clearinghouse for epidemiological data. The CDC receives reports related to the occurrence of 35 notifiable diseases (Table 7-5) from the United States and its territories, and compiles the data into tabular form, available in the publication Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). Two important disease measures that epidemiologists collect are morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death). Morbidity relative to a specific disease is the number of susceptible people who have the disease within a defined population during a specific time period. It usually is expressed as a rate. Because population size fluctuates constantly, it is conventional to use the population size at the midpoint of the study period. Also, the units for the rate fraction are “cases per person” and usually are small decimal fractions. To make the calculated rate more “user-friendly”, it is multiplied by some power of 10 (“K”) to achieve a value that is a whole number. Thus, a morbidity rate of 0.00002 is multiplied by 100,000 (105) so it can be reported as 2 cases per 100,000 people rather than 0.00002 cases per person. Morbidity rate is calculated using the following equation:
Mortality, also expressed as a rate, is the number of people who die from a specific disease out of the total population afflicted with that disease in a specified time period. It, too, is multiplied by a factor “K” so the rate can be reported as a whole number of cases. The equations is:
Minimally, an epidemiological study evaluates morbidity or mortality data in terms of person (age, sex, race, etc.), place, and time. Sophisticated analyses require training in biostatistics, but the simple epidemiological calculation you will