Morbidity is the state of having a disease, injury, or impaired health, and in epidemiology and public health it denotes the burden of illness in a population, typically quantified through measures such as incidence, prevalence, and the frequency of complications and disability. It is distinguished from mortality, w…
Morbidity is the state of having a disease, injury, or impaired health, and in epidemiology and public health it denotes the burden of illness in a population, typically quantified through measures such as incidence, prevalence, and the frequency of complications and disability. It is distinguished from mortality, which counts deaths, and the two are often examined together to capture both the occurrence of disease and its fatal outcomes. Morbidity reflects not only the presence of conditions but also their severity, duration, and impact on functioning and quality of life, and reducing it is a central aim of preventive medicine and clinical care. In preventive practice, understanding the determinants and predictors of morbidity supports screening, risk stratification, and targeted intervention; for example, biomarkers such as natriuretic peptides have been studied to predict cardiac morbidity and mortality after major surgery, and analyses of risk factors, complications, and predictors of poor outcomes inform the management of conditions ranging from severe paediatric diarrhoea to hypertension in women. Preventable contributors, including overweight and obesity, behavioural risk factors, infectious diseases such as malaria, and the consequences of injury, are particular targets of preventive strategies, screening programmes, and health-promotion efforts aimed at measuring and reducing the impact of illness across populations.
8 peer-reviewed articles, ranked by relevance. Each links to its DOI.
The 8 articles above have been cited 16 times in the scholarly literature. Citation data via OpenAlex and Crossref, updated Jun 2026.
A sample of recent works citing this journal's research on Morbidity, linking to each citing work.