Studying a health problem within a particular population requires adequate preparation of all factors that would lead to reliable results. Epidemiology studies offer important information use in carrying out further research. Central to the epidemiology study are the person, place, and time signifying the people affected by the condition, the place of the incidence, and the time. Therefore, this study aims at discussing the prevalence of Tuberculosis (TB) among African Americans.
Various personal characteristics tend and behaviors have an important role in examining a health status and might be treated as exposures or risk factors considered in undertaking the study. In the study of TB among African Americans, age, sex and ethnicity will be some of the important variables of interest in the study (Yap et al., 2018). This is because the frequency of the health outcome can vary depending on these characteristics. However, in this case, the researcher would take the initiative of thinking broadly about other personal features that might affect the health issue (Moss et al., 2020). The ethnic background and family health records would be some of the important variables that would define the outcome of an increase or decrease of TB among African Americans.
The variation in the location is another factor that relays more information about the prevalence of TB among the selected population. The geographic location of the selected population provides etiology data of the health issue (Pagaoa et al., 2017). The geographical location that exposes blacks to TB such as overcrowding because of homelessness is one of the features that would be considered in the study. The conditions and association of people in a particular location affect the increased TB spread among the selected population. For instance, close contact situation is one of the risk factors of TB and location might define how close people are to each other.
Public health in the US always provides data of numerous health concerns overtime and this is always important in determining trends of TB on African Americans over time. The study would be examining how the frequency of TB has been varying over the decades and project the likely effect that the trend would depict in the future (Bennett et al., 2018).
TB increases the death rate of both adults and children across the globe. The disease that kills both young and adult population hits the nation differently as it robs the country’s potential generation. The need to protect the future current and generation from eradication calls for effective research studies that would aid in examining TB in the US. The frequency of TB among African Americans changed from 7 cases to 3.4 cases per 100000 persons in the last decade (Marks et al., 2019). The rate at which new cases of TB are registered is worrying calling for effective intervention to solve the problem. Currently, TB is the second leading cause of death globally with 1.5 million deaths annually. This data reveals the worrying levels of TB in the US and across the world (Blumberg, 2020). Therefore, there is a need to develop an intervention that would counter the increased cases of TB and raise awareness on the significance of practicing prevention measures in countering TB.
What is the prevalence of TB among African Americans?
TB has been one of the increasing health concerns in the US that have attracted numerous empirical studies in examining its underlying cause among African Americans. The selection of this health problem as a problem under investigation is important in designing the most effective solution for the current TB problem in the US.
Bennett, D. E., Courval, J. M., Onorato, I., Agerton, T., Gibson, J. D., Lambert, L., … & Castro, K. G. (2018). Prevalence of tuberculosis infection in the United States population: the national health and nutrition examination survey, 1999–2000. American journal of respiratory and critical care medicine, 177(3), 348-355. https://doi.org/10.1164/rccm.200701-057OC