Marac cases: Five year trend analysis to Sep 2020

Marac data is collected from Maracs in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and some of the Maracs in Scotland. It is collected at meeting level which means we have information about the cohort of cases discussed at each meeting but we do not hold data on individual cases. The data presented here represents cases heard at Maracs between the months of October to September over a 5 year time period, where the year 2020 is 1st October 2019 to 30th September 2020.

The 12 month figures detailed in this research report are based on the published data at the time. Sometimes Maracs fail to send us their data for a quarter, in which case we use their last quarter’s data as a proxy. If a Marac does not send us data for two quarters in a row then they are removed from the dataset. Also, occasionally Maracs make corrections to the data after it is published, these corrections are not represented in this dataset.

One of the ways in which we publish the data is as an annual number of cases per 10,000 adult (16+) females. We produce this figure by dividing the number of cases (including repeats) by the adult female population covered by the Marac, as based on the 2011 census, and multiplying that figure by 10,000. There are sometimes differences in which Maracs are included in the dataset each year, for instance a Marac may not be able to send us their data one quarter. Therefore when looking at trends in cases it is more accurate to use this ‘Cases per 10,000’ figure, instead of the number of cases, because it takes into account Maracs not being included by removing their population figures from the calculation.

Please note that the number of cases includes repeats, therefore these numbers do not represent the total number of individuals as a person may be referred into Marac more than once so then they would be counted as more than one case.