Incidence and Prevalence in Epidemiology

Significant changes in the incidence and/or prevalence of a disease often provide the first clues epidemiologists have of an association between the disease and unknown risk factor(s) to which that population may have been exposed. Observations about changes in incidence can lead to the formulation of hypotheses which are tested in more analytic epidemiologic studies.

To prepare, go to an online news source and locate an article that deals with incidence or prevalence. It could come from an online newspaper or magazine or yahoo.com (but not a medical journal or MMWR). Within that news source you may want to do a search on the terms incidence and/or prevalence to locate possible articles. Select one article that was published within the last six months that relates to epidemiology. It could be about a disease, a risk factor or trait, etc.