Over the last decade, there has been a 10-fold increase in the number of published systematic reviews of prevalence. In meta-analyses of prevalence, the summary estimate represents an average prevalence from included studies. This estimate is truly informative only if there is no substantial heterogeneity among the different contexts being pooled.…

Meta-analyzing count data can be challenging when follow-up time varies across studies. Simply pooling aggregate data over time-periods would result in biased estimates, which may erroneously inform clinical decision-making. In this study, we exploit the convolution property of the Poisson distribution to develop a likelihood for observed…