What This Document Is
This document is a pre-lab exercise and accompanying data set designed for a Microbiology course (MICR 2) at Pasadena City College. It centers around the *Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report* (MMWR), a publication from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The exercise focuses on applying epidemiological principles to real-world disease data, specifically coccidioidomycosis (Valley Fever). It includes pre-lab questions, a data analysis procedure, and review questions.
Why This Document Matters
This exercise is crucial for students learning to interpret public health data and understand how the CDC tracks and monitors infectious diseases. It’s used to build skills in calculating epidemiological measurements like morbidity, mortality, and incidence, and to analyze disease trends over time. Students preparing for assessments in MICR 2, or those needing to understand how public health surveillance works, will find this document valuable.
Common Limitations or Challenges
This document provides the framework and data for analysis, but it does *not* provide completed calculations or interpretations. Students are expected to perform the calculations themselves and draw their own conclusions. It also focuses specifically on coccidioidomycosis; broader application to other diseases requires additional research. This is a practice exercise, not a comprehensive guide to epidemiology.
What This Document Provides
The full document includes:
* Pre-lab multiple choice and short answer questions testing understanding of the MMWR and key epidemiological terms (morbidity, mortality, incidence, endemic, epidemic, pandemic).
* Morbidity data for coccidioidomycosis across several four-week periods, alongside corresponding US population figures.
* Instructions for calculating incidence rates and graphing the data.
* Review questions requiring calculation of morbidity, mortality, and incidence for different diseases (with partial data provided).
* Definitions of key terms related to disease occurrence.
This preview *does not* include the answers to the pre-lab or review questions, the completed calculations, or the graph of the incidence data. It also does not include the full data tables for diseases beyond coccidioidomycosis.