Question

How do you calculate incidence for population health? Please provide an example

Answer 1

Ans.) Basically, incidence is a measure of the number of new cases of a disease (or another health outcome) that develop in a particular population of individuals at risk, during a specified time period.

To explain, example of calculation of Diabetes incidence is given below -

Suppose, 800 residents diabetes in a nursing home suffering from diabetes.

• At first blood tests on all the residents are conducted to determine which were diabetic.
• Estimate the incidence of diabetes in this population over the next 12 months, but exclude the 50 people who are already diabetic and focus on the 750 residents who are disease-free initially.
• Now, conducted additional blood tests to determine how many new cases developed during the span of time. (As some of the residents be no more or be transferred to other nursing home during the year)
• If 25 were found to be diabetic at the end of a year, then the incidence would be

                       =25/750

                       = 0.0333

= about 3.3 per hundred (3.3%) over a year.