Data Collection: Racial, Ethnic and Primary Language

The Health Research and Educational Trust, with its partners, has created this toolkit for collecting race, ethnicity, and primary language information in health care organizations. It is designed to help hospitals, health systems, community health centers, health plans, and other potential users in understanding the importance of accurate data collection, assessing organizational capacity to do so, and implementing a framework designed specifically for obtaining information from patients/enrollees about their race, ethnicity, and primary (preferred) language efficiently, effectively, and respectfully.

A review of state laws, regulations, rules and other written policies to determine the extent to which health insurers and managed care organizations are permitted to collect and report racial, ethnic and primary language information. In addition, the study examines the distinct domains of and overlap among civil rights laws, confidentiality laws, and health insurance/managed care laws. A report on Virginia specific laws, regulations, rules and other written policies is also available at this web site.

This America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) document provides key analytical points related to collecting data, as well as a guide to collecting data on physician/clinician race, ethnicity and primary language.

“This issues brief summarizes the extensive finding by AHIP and RWJF, the challenges and opportunities for expanding data collection for quality improvement, and the next steps to systematically collect, comprehend, and reduce the health disparities that exist for minorities.”

A Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and George Washington University Medical Center study of “whether the collection of patient data by race or ethnicity, as part of a program of quality improvement, violates the law.”

Using interviews conducted with administrators at federal health agencies, this report finds wide gaps between the goals of federal initiatives to eliminate racial and ethnic disparities in health care, such as Healthy People 2010, and the efforts of federal health agencies to collect and report data needed to help achieve these goals. The report provides the first comprehensive analysis of the policies and statutes governing the collection of health care data by race, ethnicity, and primary language.

To plan, implement, and evaluate programs designed to improve health conditions among racial and ethnic minority populations in the United States, public health officials and researchers require valid and reliable health surveillance data. Monitoring chronic disease and behavioral risk factors among such populations, however, is challenging. This study assesses the effects of race, ethnicity, and linguistic isolation on rates of participation in the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS).

“America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) has designed this toolkit to assist in broadening our members’ understanding of the issues surrounding data collection and its promising impact on improving quality care.”

The California Pan-Ethnic Health Network (CPEHN) is dedicated to improving the health of California’s communities of color, and it is clear that improvements cannot be made unless the growing problem of racial and ethnic disparities in our communities is addressed. However, as the National Health Disparities Report by the Agency for Healthcare Quality and Research indicates, current efforts at data collection, analysis and usage to identify and address existing disparities in health are not adequate. State agencies do not do enough to collect, standardize, and share data, and most commercial health plans do not collect race, ethnicity or language data on their enrollees. Participants at two CPEHN community convenings discussed and prioritized solutions for improving the collection and use of race and ethnicity data.

The Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET) is working with a consortium of six leading hospitals and health systems to address racial and ethnic disparities in treatment and outcomes. This is a report of findings about current practices around race, ethnicity, and primary language data collection in hospitals based on site visit and survey data.

Collecting and using race ethnicity and language data in ambulatory care

The mission of the Data Resource Center (DRC) is to take the voices of parents, gathered through the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) and the National Survey of Children with Special Health Care Needs (NS-CSHCN), and share the results through this free online resource. Easy access to children’s health data allows researchers, policymakers, family advocates and consumers to work together to promote a higher quality health care system for children, youth and families. Learn more about the DRC 3

2010 U.S. CENSUS MAP Remember about a year & a half ago you filled out a census form? Well here are the result of this process. What you will see is a Map of the US – not just the 48 states but all of the 50 states. Territories are not in the census – but they did provide information during this process. So let us say you are in Virginia, you can go by county & as you zoom in by city to see the increase or decrease & then you can see the changes of the various races within these cities. Look at places you know & also look at the map at the darker brown location

Characteristics, Rankings, Top Counties by Seth Motel and Eileen Patten Among the 50.7 million Hispanics in the United States, nearly two-thirds (65%), or 33 million, self-identify as being of Mexican origin, according to tabulations of the 2010 American Community Survey (ACS) by the Pew Hispanic Center, a project of the Pew Research Center. No other Hispanic subgroup rivals the size of the Mexican-origin population. Puerto Ricans, the nation’s second largest Hispanic origin group, make up just 9% of the total Hispanic population in the 50 states and the District of Columbia

The U.S. Census Bureau today released Census Explorer, a new interactive map that gives users easier access to neighborhood-level statistics. The map uses updated statistics from the 2008-2012 American Community Survey (ACS), also released today.