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?
CCOI (Center for Clinical Observational Investigations): Run by the NIH, "The mission of the Center for Clinical Observational Investigations (CCOI) is to reduce barriers to finding and evaluating for use relevant clinical datasets by providing a curated metadata profile comprised of an overview, basic statistics, and concept counts for each clinical dataset."
NLM Dataset Catalog "The Dataset Catalog is a catalog of biomedical datasets from various repositories for users to search, discover, retrieve, and connect with datasets to accelerate scientific research. This beta version aims to collect user feedback to inform future product development."
Copyright © Baylor® University. All rights reserved.
Report It | Title IX | Mental Health Resources | Anonymous Reporting | Legal Disclosures