Statistics, Health  Tags: statistics  

To provide WUSM researchers and their staff with access to specialized software tools and resources the Becker Library introduced in April 2008 a new computing resource called “The Research Pod.” The Research Pod is a cluster of customized iMacs and PCs equipped with a core set of statistical, research, and presentation software packages.

Conveniently located in the Library Atrium, the Research Pod computers offer the following statistical programs:

• Statistical Programs
  • SPSS
  • STATA
  • SAS
  • Maple-Waterloo

 

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 Sources of Statistics

• National registration systems gather data from birth, death, marriage, and divorce certificates
• Ongoing surveys of ambulatory (outpatient) and institutionalized (inpatient) populations
• Surveys of health facilities (hospitals, nursing facilities, etc.)
• Organizations and institutions (both public and private)

While there is no single agency charged with collecting health data, many of them compile statistics relevant to their mission. Many agencies and institutions are required to collect and report certain statistics to the government. Therefore, this mandate enables some statistics to be easily accessible while others remain hard to find or are non-existent. Some statistics are buried within larger documents produced by private institutions and organizations, such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation or the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation. When searching for health statistics, keep in mind the types of data that should be registered with "some" agency (births, deaths, communicable diseases that put the public at risk, etc.) versus those that are not "mandated" (ie., number of persons with chronic disease in St. Louis County). Occasional surveys may be performed on a sample of the population in general and published only once by private and/or government agencies.

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Major Compilers of Statistics

National

·         Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS)

·         National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)

·         Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

·         Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA)

·         Bureau of the Census

International

·         World Health Organization (WHO)

·         Pan American Health Organization (PANHO)

·         United Nations (UN)

State-County

Various state departments such as human resources, state centers for health statistics, universities, hospitals, institutions, and other public and private organizations are all contributors to the abundance of health care data sets.

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Getting Started

1. What is the subject/topic?
2. What are the specifics of the request?
3. Consider the sources to be checked
4. Consult those sources
5. Reformulate the request if information not found

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Using Databases, and the WWW

 

MEDLINE and Other Databases

Many articles in MEDLINE (which also contains data from the former HealthSTAR and AIDSLINE databases), CINAHL, and CancerLit contain statistical data. While MEDLINE should not be your first choice when searching for health statistics, it does contain many articles that include such data. Helpful MeSH (subject headings) include: health surveys, mortality, morbidity, prevalence, incidence, vital statistics, and population. Valuable subheadings include: epidemiology (ep), statistics & numerical data (sn), mortality (mo), manpower (ma), utilization (ut), supply & distribution (sd), and trends (td). A few search tips to follow when searching MEDLINE and other NLM databases include:

1.      Combine subject headings with subheadings: use epidemiology with disease headings; use statistics & numerical data with non-disease headings. EXAMPLE(S): Heart diseases/ep [epidemiology]; Office visits/sn [statistics & numerical data].

2.      Combine subject headings for devices or procedures with the subheading(s) utilization or supply & distribution. EXAMPLE: Lithotripsy/ut [utilization].

3.      When searching for the number of personnel in a specific field, combine the subject heading with the subheading manpower. EXAMPLE: Obstetrical nursing/ma [manpower].

4.      When searching for statistics on heart diseases, perform a textword search on Framingham.

WWW

·         Google (WWW search engine)

·         MetaCrawler (WWW search service)

·         Yahoo (WWW index)

·         National Center for Health Statistics

·         Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

·         Dept. of Health and Human Services

·         Bureau of the Census

·         FedSTATS

·         World Health Organization

·         Pan American Health Organization

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Print vs. Internet Sources

When should one use the Internet versus a print source to find health statistics? Although there is no definite answer to this question, Internet search engines such as AltaVista and MetaCrawler have yielded favorable results for difficult to find statistics, especially those that deal with health behaviors and some chronic diseases. Use agency home pages to access frequently asked questions (FAQs); these pages contain a significant amount of statistical data. For example, the Department of Agriculture collects statistics that deal with nutrition and diet. Many printed statistical data sources are now appearing in full text on the Internet: Health, United States; Statistical Abstract of the United States, etc. The Internet can be used to find the answers to these questions:

1. What percentage of the US population is overweight?
2. How much money was spent on medical research in 1995?
3. Which HMOs are top performers in North Carolina?
4. Approximately how many board certified pediatricians are in Orange County, NC?

 

Adapted from a document originally created by the Duke University Medical Center Library