All Times ET
Keywords: : data integration, data science, health surveys, administrative data
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) is responsible for collecting accurate, relevant, and timely data related to health. In addition to collecting and disseminating the Nation’s official vital statistics, NCHS conducts several population-based surveys and surveys of healthcare providers and facilities. The data collected through these surveys allow NCHS to produce statistics that can be used to guide policies to improve the health of the U.S. population.
However, there are many critical health policy questions that that cannot be answered with health survey data alone, in part because they often only represent a snapshot in time. In addition, most population-based health surveys rely on respondent reports and are limited by respondent recall. When these data are linked with administrative data, analysts can gain insight into health outcomes such as mortality and health care utilization. These linked data also enable methodological studies, such as the assessment of data quality. Data linkages enhance the analytic capabilities and scientific value of both the health survey and administrative data.
This talk will focus on the current activities of the NCHS Data Linkage Program. The program is actively working to expand the utility of its national health survey data by integrating it with other health-related data sources. The talk will include a discussion of the data sources that have been linked, examples of how these linked data can help address key health policy questions, and a description of current data modernization initiatives, including incorporating machine learning techniques into linkage algorithms to improve accuracy and efficiency and assessing privacy-preserving record linkage as a means to expand the data sources available for linkage. The work will be described in the context of the broader effort to expand the data infrastructure to inform evidence-based decisions in alignment with the Evidence Act of 2018.