Data Sources & Measurement

Health and human services policies and programs have wide-ranging effects on individuals and communities which can facilitate optimal health and well-being or impose harm, particularly for historically underserved communities.

This brief describes differences in engagement in child support for custodial parents living in rural and nonrural areas. Key findings are below.Key Points:

This report and accompanying discussion by ASPE and NORC highlights the claims data limitations identified during the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency Health (PHE) and provides considerations to address these limitations. The report identifies that limitations related to claims data were existing issues, exacerbated by, but not unique to, the COVID-19 PHE.

This report presents the set of guiding principles for linking state Medicaid data with birth certificates that was developed by state and national experts and leaders. These guiding principles can be implemented to create a multistate linked database that researchers would be able to access and use for research on maternal health, including patient-centered outcomes research (PCOR).

Improving health equity in the United States is a priority for the Biden-Harris Administration in order to address longstanding disparities in health outcomes. Health inequities can be conceptualized and measured as drivers of differences in health outcomes.

The Early Childhood Systems Collective Impact Project (ECS Collective Impact Project) will help to re-envision a truly coordinated approach to program implementation designed to advance equitable early childhood and family well-being outcomes across federal programs that support expectant parents, children ages 0 to 8, and their families.

This report analyzes newly-released data from CMS that provides information on changes in ownership among hospitals and skilled nursing facilities (SNFs), based on information reported to CMS through the Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System (PECOS).

Telehealth services expanded rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from the Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey (HPS) in 2021, this Issue Brief analyzes national trends in telehealth utilization across all payers and examines how use of video-enabled vs. audio-only telehealth services differ across patient populations.

Federal surveys relied on by researchers and policymakers for estimates of the uninsured population have been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, potentially influencing the accuracy of their estimates. This report analyzes evidence from a variety of data sources, including surveys and administrative data, which collectively indicate that the number of uninsured people in the U.S.

The objective of this report is to assess the current landscape of federal and federally funded health care data relevant to PCOR and economic analysis to identify gaps for data stewards, researchers, and future collection efforts.