Population Attributable Risk

POPULATION ATTRIBUTABLE RISK

The term "attributable risk" describes the proportion of disease that can be attributed to an exposure to risk that persons in a population have experienced. It is a general term that is usually more precisely defined by epidemiologists in one of several ways. The most widely used of these is probably the population attributable risk. This is the incidence rate of a condition in a specified population that is associated with or attributable to exposure to a specific risk. There are so many variations in the terminology of "risk" that interested readers should consult a textbook or the Dictionary of Epidemiology for details.

JOHN M. LAST

(SEE ALSO: Causality, Causes, and Causal Inference; Epidemiology; Incidence and Prevalence; Risk Assessment, Risk Management)

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Last, J. M., ed. (2000). Dictionary of Epidemiology, 4th edition. New York: Oxford University Press.