PHI-7.1 Data Details

At this time, we do not propose setting a target for these objectives. While we do not have a clear sense for the potential progress that could be achieved by the end of the decade, the Workgroup’s consensus is that a) the purpose of these objectives is to track and report data on availability of data for measuring health disparities and b) a substantial increase in the availability of these data is not likely. For many surveys, a redesign of the sampling methodology would be needed to effect an increase in the number of objectives that report data by race and ethnicity, sex, and socioeconomic status. In addition, there are nationally-representative population-based data sources that collect high quality data yet do not meet our proposed definition for collecting data on all major population groups. For example, even though NHANES oversamples African-Americans, Asians, and Hispanics and provides nationally-representative data, the NHANES does not collect data on Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islanders. Therefore, objectives using NHANES data would not meet the Healthy People definition for collecting data on race and ethnicity despite the NHANES’ goal of oversampling racial and ethnic minorities. The goal of PHI-7 is not to single out data sources that do not meet these definitions; rather it is to assess data sources used to measure and track Healthy People objectives to promote availability of data for all major population groups so that health disparities can be accurately measured and tracked over the decade. For this reason, the Workgroup is proposing to move these objectives from developmental to measureable, not set a target.