Data description

us_contagious_diseases documents yearly counts for the seven major diseases in US states from 1928 - 2011.

The data set originates from the Tycho Project.

The Tycho project unlocks global health data to people in over 90 countries.

They are working with the top health organizations to improve access to standardized global health data.

Some of their partnering organizations include:

Data sets are continuously being compiled on this site and by the MIDAS Informatics Services Group (ISG) of the University of Pittsburgh. The ISG is funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIGMS).

A majority of this team are doctoral students.

Description of each variable in this set:

Variable Description
disease A factor containing disease names.
state A factor containing state names.
year year observations occured
weeks_reporting Number of weeks counts were reported that year.
count Total number of reported cases.
population State population, interpolated for non-census years.

Data visualizations

“Number of Reported Cases in the US Each Year per Disease” describes the amount of reported cases per disease during a specific year.

Plotting the years on the X axis and the number of reported cases on the Y axis in addition to filling the bars with each disease will portray how many casses there are per year of each disease. This set-up allows for many different type of conclusions and observations.

While observing the graph, one can see what diseases progressed, which have died down, those that continue to linger, and those that have been eradicated.

For example, Smallpox has been nearly erradicated and you can see this on the graph as no more hot pink bars show up after the mid 1950s.

Viewers can also conclude that Hepititus A is an increasingly common disease in the United states.

There are many observations one can make from this single plot.

“Trends in Smallpox” is set up with the year on the x axis and the number of reported cases on the y axis.

This reveals that there have been no more cases of Smallpox in the US since 1953.

Below is another scatter plot confirming that population and reported cases vary directly:

The greater the population, the greater the number of cases per disease are reported.