Definition: Prevalence

Category: Health

Prevalence in health statistics is the measure of the number of cases of a given disease existing at a certain time expressed as the proportion of a population with the disease at any time in a year. For prevalence statistics from different studies to be comparable, the length of period under consideration asked must be the same. The main sources of disease-specific data for incidence and prevalence data across a range of EU countries are: health interview surveys, cross-sectional population surveys, panel/cohort surveys, medical records/administrative statistics, hospital records, disease-specific registers, general practice (GP) records and administrative notifications.