Posted: December 6th, 2022

Instructions

Read the MMWR activity description, and report pages ( Exercise 7.3- Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR)). Watch the video instructions below.

Important: Links and instructions to pull CDC data provided in this exercise (Exercise 7-3) have changed, from what is written in the activity description. The following are the current adaptations and instructions to access CDC data:

I- To find the data for your assignment go to data.cdc.gov.

1. Search your disease in the search bar at the top/right.  

2. It should take you to a page with a list of links. Select the link to the most recent NNDSS table. The easiest way to see which one is the most recent, look on the right side of the link, where it says “Dataset date”. Choose the most recent (2021, or earlier if 2021 is not available). 

3. Follow the table’s link.

4. A new window will open with your selected table. At the top right of the table, you will see a tab for “view data”, select it.

5. An expanded table with multiple option tabs on its top will open.

6. Look at the table first column and read the first entry, does it list US residents, and then each state? If it does, then select the “filter” tab and filter for the “US residents”. if it does not, does it list “United States” and then each state? In that case filter for “United States”. This will reduce the data on the table to the Averages per Week for the United States. Use either the cumulative data to complete the assignment working table.

II- To calculate incidence:

1. Use the Census data This information can also be found at https://www.census.gov/

a- Using the monthly population estimates from the “Census data” table linked above, for the year corresponding to your disease dataset, locate the July estimate for the year of MMWR data (e.g. if you downloaded the weekly data for your disease corresponding to the year 2017, locate July 2017 in the “Census data” table, and use that population value in the incidence formula.

b- Alternatively, you could Explore DATA/ tables/search for the Annual Estimates of Resident Population for the US.

2. Remember to use the US resident for July of the year of your disease dataset.

3. Apply the July population data to the incidence formula to calculate the disease incidence for every four-week total.

III. Don’t ignore the “K” in the incidence calculations. K is an arbitrary number that should be kept constant for all weekly calculations. K depends on the range of calculated incidence values for your data set. e.g. if the calculated incidence values are 1×10-6, which is equal to 0.000001, the “K ” should be at least 1,000,000 (1×106) or larger, to have positive whole numbers (1) to graph (point 3, MMWR worksheet).

For additional information on incidence and prevalence watch the video: Epidemiology – Incidence and Prevalence (video also available below).

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