In Week 4, you will continue to assume the role of the public health informatician and use your pre-intervention asthma surveillance data set from the CDC to calculate risk/odds ratios and prevalence/incidence rates. Review the data set from a population perspective and calculate various population ratios and rates for the asthma data in your Excel spreadsheet. You will then answer the following questions in a short application paper of 3–4-pages, explaining your results. You may refer to the suggested readings for this week.
Ratios and Rate Questions
[Note: School populations: Asthma elementary student count in this study is 800 for this school year. School’s population (A + B + C + D) = 7,200 students for this school year.]
- Does one school have a higher number of students with asthma?
- Which school has the highest number of students with wheezing?
- How many students had both asthma and wheezing?
- If you have asthma, what are the odds that you also have wheezing?
- Is the odds ratio for bronchitis and RAD lower or higher than asthma and wheezing?
- How many children with wheezing were prescribed medication? From those results, what is the risk ratio?
- Is the risk ratio for being prescribed medication for asthma higher or lower than being prescribed medication for wheezing?
- Are the risk ratios for asthma and wheezing higher for children under the age of 10 than they are for the survey population as a whole?
- What is the student asthma prevalence for the school district, i.e., A, B, C, D based on total student population as shown above?
- What is the student asthma incident rate for the school district, i.e., A, B, C, D based on total student population as shown above?
In a summary, provide your interpretation of what your statistical ratio and rate calculations results demonstrate about this grade school population of students’ asthma risk and odds ratios, prevalence, and incidence rates. Explain how you may use this data in supporting the need and development of a public health asthma prevention program. You may use the prevalence resources in the links provided for your summary response.
Give reasons and examples in support of your responses. Cite all sources using APA format.