Disease Prevalence

Many state and public health departments have active genetic screening and prevention programs. However, many of these programs are limited to maternal health and child diseases.

As advances are made in the field of genetics, public health practitioners will be instrumental in developing programs and services to identify health problems and related resources, evaluate resource effectiveness and present the results to policy makers (Piper, M.A., et al. The Role of state public health agencies in genetics and disease prevention: results of a national survey. Public Health Reports, 2001.)

There is a correlation between the prevalence of many diseases and environmental factors. The link between environment and disease is one topic that public health practitioners address. Hence, disease prevalence will play an important role in program and service development.

1. CDC Web site - Conduct a search in HuGENet



• Click on the Genetics and Genomics tab
• Find the link to access HuGENet and click on it
• Click on the link for HuGE Case Studies
• Locate the August 2003 Case Study on Genomics and Cancer Prevention

• Go back to the HuGENet Menu
• Click on the link to access HuGE Facts Sheets
• Click on one of the many Fact Sheets that discuss carcinoma
• Read the Fact Sheet to learn the disease burden on public health and whether or not population testing is available.
• Go back to the HuGENet Menu
• Click on the link to access HuGE Reviews
• Select a Review on cancer and read it to see if any of the above three questions can be answered from the Review

National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)

Many statistics can also be located from the NCHS homepage. This homepage can be accessed from the CDC Web site. Click on national data under the Data & Statistics Tab.