Glossary
- Age-Specific Fertility Rate
A per-age fertility hazard applied to individual female simulants to determine births at each time step. See Fertility.
- All-Cause Mortality Rate
- ACMR
The total mortality rate from all causes combined for a given population. Used as the starting point for the cause-deleted mortality calculation. See Mortality.
- Birth Prevalence
The proportion of newborn simulants who are born with a given condition. Used to initialize disease state at birth. See Disease States.
- Cause-Deleted Mortality
- Mortality Rate
The effective per-simulant mortality rate. It is calculated by starting from the ACMR and subtracting the CSMR for explicitly modeled and unmodeled causes, then adding back any risk-modified unmodeled contributions. See Mortality.
- Cause-Specific Mortality Rate
- CSMR
The mortality rate attributable to a single cause. See Mortality.
- Crude Birth Rate
A population-level measure of births computed from live-birth covariate data and the ratio of simulated to true population size. See Fertility.
- Disability Weight
A severity weight between 0 and 1 that represents the magnitude of health loss associated with a disease state. Used to compute years lived with disability (YLDs). See Disease States.
- Dwell Time
The minimum duration a simulant must remain in a disease state before any outgoing transition can fire. Specified in days. See Disease States.
- Excess Mortality Rate
- EMR
The additional mortality rate attributable to being in a particular disease state, above and beyond the background mortality rate. See Disease States.
- Incidence Rate
The rate at which simulants in a susceptible state acquire a disease and transition to a diseased state. See Disease Transitions.
- Population Attributable Fraction
- PAF
The fraction of disease burden in a population that is attributable to a particular risk factor exposure. A PAF of 1 means the disease is fully attributed to the risk. Typically used to compute the calibration constant. See Risk Attributable Disease and Calibration Constant.
- Prevalence
The proportion of the population that occupies a given disease state at a point in time. Used during initialization to assign simulants to states. See Disease States.
- Remission Rate
The rate at which simulants in a diseased state recover and transition out of that state. See Disease Transitions.
- Theoretical Minimum Risk Life Expectancy
- TMRLE
The maximum life expectancy achievable if all risk factors were at their theoretical minimum levels. Sourced from the Global Burden of Disease study and used as the reference table for computing YLL. See Mortality.
- Unmodeled Cause
A cause of death that is not represented by its own disease component in the simulation but whose CSMR is still accounted for in the mortality calculation. See Mortality.
- Years of Life Lost
- YLL
The residual life expectancy at the time of a simulant’s death, computed from the TMRLE table. Accumulated across the population as a summary measure of premature mortality. See Mortality.
- Continuous Distribution
A risk exposure distribution modeled using a standard statistical distribution such as
normalorlognormal. Exposure values are obtained by evaluating the distribution’s PPF at each simulant’s propensity. See Continuous Distribution.- Dichotomous Distribution
A two-category exposure distribution that classifies simulants as “exposed” or “unexposed” based on a single probability threshold. See Dichotomous Distribution.
- Ensemble Distribution
A risk exposure distribution formed by combining multiple weighted parametric distributions to capture complex, potentially multi-modal exposure shapes. See Ensemble Distribution.
- Percent-Point Function
- PPF
The inverse of the cumulative distribution function. Given a quantile q, the PPF returns the value x such that P(X ≤ x) = q. Used to convert a simulant’s propensity into an exposure value. See Exposure.
- Propensity
A uniform random value in [0, 1] assigned to each simulant at initialization and held constant for the duration of the simulation. It represents the simulant’s position in the cumulative distribution of a risk factor and is used as input to the PPF. See Propensity.
- Calibration Constant
A value, typically derived from the population attributable fraction, that adjusts a target rate so that, after relative risk multiplication, the population-level rate remains consistent with input data. See Calibration Constant.
- Log-Linear Model
A dose–response model in which the logarithm of the relative risk is proportional to the difference between a simulant’s exposure and the TMREL. See Log-Linear Model (Continuous Exposure).
- Relative Risk
A measure of how much more likely an outcome is for a simulant at a given exposure level compared to a reference level. Used by risk effect components to modify target rates such as disease incidence or mortality. See Relative Risk.
- Theoretical Minimum-Risk Exposure Distribution
- TMRED
The distribution of exposure levels at which the risk to health is at a theoretical minimum. The midpoint of this distribution defines the TMREL. See Relative Risk.
- Theoretical Minimum-Risk Exposure Level
- TMREL
The exposure level at which the risk to health is at a theoretical minimum, typically computed as the midpoint of the TMRED. Relative risks are normalized so that the relative risk at the TMREL equals 1. See Relative Risk.
- Years Lived with Disability
- YLD
The total time spent in non-fatal health states, weighted by disability weight, and converted to years. Accumulated across the population as a summary measure of morbidity. See Disability Observer.
- Therapeutic Inertia
The tendency for treatment algorithms to deviate from clinical guidelines — for example, when treatment is not escalated during a healthcare visit despite guidelines recommending escalation. Modeled as a probability drawn from a triangular distribution. See Therapeutic Inertia.
- Linear Scale-Up
A time-varying pattern in which an intervention’s coverage is linearly interpolated between a start value and an end value over a configured date range. See Linear Scale-Up.