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Finding Health Data

This library guide contains resources on health data and statistics

Finding Health Prevalence Information

Prevalence in the health sciences is a measure of the number of cases of a specific condition found in a population at a particular point in time and is often reported as a proportion or fraction of the population. Prevalence is the measure of both existing and new cases at a point in time. 

In comparison, Incidence measures the number of new cases of the condition that manifest in a population during a specific time interval.

In other words, prevalence is the proportion of a population who exhibit a characteristic in a given time period irrespective of when they first developed the characteristic, while incidence is the number of new cases of a characteristic that develop in a population in a given time period. 

Sources: 

Franco M. Impellizzeri, Alan McCall, Tim Meyer & Maarten van Smeden (2022) Measures of (injury and illness) occurrence: a primer on epidemiological concepts and terminology for authors, Science and Medicine in Football, 6:2, 137-140, DOI: 10.1080/24733938.2022.2062897

NIH, What is Prevalence? 

Example: Check out the video below to see how clinicians use prevalence and incidence to record cancer statistics. 

Prevalence by geographic area

 

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