You are a member of a healthcare team which has been sent to a province in a third world nation whose size and population is almost close to that of Burlington, Vermont. The team has been tasked with performing a health needs assessment for the province over the course of 18 months and you, having some knowledge about epidemiology and bio-statistics, is required to estimate the burden of type 2 diabetes in this population. Since there are no surveillance systems in place for diabetes, what measure of health or measure of disease frequency will you calculate and why? Being given a budget of $100,000, briefly propose or speculate how you will obtain the needed information to calculate your measure of disease frequency or burden.
