Rationale and Objectives
Given the growing importance of identifying and reducing health disparities, it is important for radiologist researchers to engage in this space to promote evidence-based imaging disparities policy. However, researchers are often hindered by access to appropriate data to perform quality research.
Materials and Methods
This paper reviews existing publicly available data sets that may be useful for performing imaging disparities research.
Results
Multiple data sources are publicly available and have been used by previous researchers to examine imaging disparities.
Conclusions
This paper provides an overview of publicly available data sources that radiologists can use for imaging disparities research. Appropriate use of these data sources will require researchers to carefully consider the overall research question and level of analysis.
Introduction
Over the past three decades, the examination of health disparities has grown from a niche research area to an important component of the National Institutes of Health’s research portfolio through the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities . Although there is no standard definition for “health disparities,” it can be broadly construed to mean variation in the prevalence and incidence of disease, health status, mortality, and other patient outcomes—as well as differences in health-care access, utilization, and quality—related to specific populations such as ethnicity, gender, geography, or socioeconomic status (SES) . Given the persistence of disparities across a wide range of health and access measures , some consideration of health disparities is now included in almost all clinical and health services studies through mechanisms such as the stratification or adjustment of results by appropriate population and SES characteristics—in addition to being the primary focus of the studies themselves .
Academic radiologists are involved in this effort, with calls for radiologists to study health disparities and translate results to practice in the hopes of reducing them . Most imaging disparities studies focus on access and utilization, although a few examine patient outcomes . Research on disparities in imaging utilization covers the breadth of current practice with recent studies examining mammography , positron emission tomography , computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging , pediatric radiography , and aggregate imaging utilization .
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Data Considerations
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Unit of Analysis
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Study Question
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Publicly Available Datasets for Health Disparities Research
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TABLE 1
Publicly Available Datasets for Imaging Disparities Research
Dataset Source Unit of Data Imaging Data American Community Survey http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/acs/ Aggregate No Area Health Resources Files https://datawarehouse.hrsa.gov/topics/ahrf.aspx Aggregate No Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System https://www.cdc.gov/brfss/ Individual Yes County Health Rankings http://www.countyhealthrankings.org/ Aggregate No Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/ Aggregate No Kaiser Family Foundation State Health Facts http://kff.org/statedata/ Aggregate No Medical Expenditure Panel Survey https://meps.ahrq.gov/mepsweb/ Individual Yes Medicare Geographic Variation Public Use File https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/medicare-geographic-variation/gv_puf.html Aggregate Yes Neiman Almanac www.neimanhpi.org/almanac Aggregate Yes Physician/Supplier Procedure Summary Master File https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Files-for-Order/NonIdentifiableDataFiles/PhysicianSupplierProcedureSummaryMasterFile.html Aggregate Yes
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Aggregate Data Sources: Population Characteristics
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Aggregate Data Sources: Imaging Data
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Another aggregate resource for imaging data includes the Neiman Almanac , which contains state and national level for more than 125 measures of imaging utilization, imaging spending, and the radiology workforce.
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Individual Level Data Sources
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Conclusion
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