Question

*Please answer the entire question*

Epidemiology Question: "You are an epidemiologist in charge of county health services for low income, HIV positive individuals in NJ. Which data would be most important for planning the long term health care needs of this community, INCIDENCE or PREVALENCE?" In about 10 to 12 sentences, please explain why you selected incidence or prevalence as your answer. Be sure to fully support your answer with relevant information.

Answer 1

Incidence

Incidence is the rate of new (or newly diagnosed) cases of the disease. It is generally reported as the number of new cases occurring within a period of time (e.g., per month, per year). It is more meaningful when the incidence rate is reported as a fraction of the population at risk of developing the disease (e.g., per 100,000 or per million population). Obviously, the accuracy of incidence data depends upon the accuracy of diagnosis and reporting of the disease. In some cases (including ESRD) it may be more appropriate to report the rate of treatment of new cases since these are known, whereas the actual incidence of untreated cases is not.

Incidence rates can be further categorized according to different subsets of the population – e.g., by gender, by racial origin, by age group or by diagnostic category.

Prevalence

Prevalence is the actual number of cases alive, with the disease either during a period of time (period prevalence) or at a particular date in time (point prevalence). Period prevalence provides the better measure of the disease load since it includes all new cases and all deaths between two dates, whereas point prevalence only counts those alive on a particular date.

Prevalence is also most meaningfully reported as the number of cases as a fraction of the total population at risk and can be further categorized according to different subsets of the population.

This problems comes under Prevalence: The factor of prevalence of HIV cases was based, on average, on the number of people living with HIV in New Jersey by race, ethnicity and gender for the most recent one-year period....The Committee calculated a ratio of people living with HIV based on their representation in the New Jersey population. A "Prevalence Range" was created to score the target populations using five numeric levels.