Forum offers stats on well-being of elderly
Filed under: Government, Health data, Health journalism, Studies, Tools
AgingStats.gov is an often-overlooked federal clearinghouse of aging-related data from the Federal Interagency Forum on Age-Related Statistics. It focuses on summary reports.
Its latest effort, Older Americans 2010: Key Indicators of Well-Being (174-page PDF), summarizes 37 key indicators it believes are broadly relevant and easy to understand. By my count, 24 of those are explicitly health-related.
Everything is illustrated with an abundance of charts and maps, and an emphasis on bulleted summary and analysis helps keep things accessible. Those looking for a deeper dive into the summary numbers will want to head to the appendix.
As part of its health sections, the report contains seven “Health Status” indicators, including chronic health conditions, depressive symptoms, sensory impairments and oral health, and functional limitations.
One example:
It also includes eight “Health Risks and Behaviors” – things like diet, air quality, mammography and vaccinations – and nine “Health Care” indicators, including expenditures, prescription drugs and residential services.
The forum, which nobody seems to refer to by the acronym FIFARS, has been around since 1986. Participants include the Census Bureau, a number of Health and Human Services departments (AHRQ, CMS, NCHS and others), HUD, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the EPA, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Social Security Administration.
Thanks to AHCJ member Eileen Beal for suggesting this as a tool other members might find helpful.
How NASA came to work with a children’s hospital
Filed under: Children, Government, Hot Health Headline
Brian Ahier, writing for Government Health IT, tells the story of how NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories ended up collaborating with Childrens Hospital Los Angeles on a seven-year project focusing on the detection of pediatric cancer through a “a collaborative approach to the discovery and development of early detection biomarkers.” It sounds like a goofy match but, when Ahier breaks it down, it’s easier to see how and why these strange bedfellows ended up together.
Photo by nasa1fan/MSFC via Flickr1. JPL presents a paper on a software framework used for planetary science that functions as ” a kind of search engine that allows scientists working with data in one expression or format to find and compare their data with another.”
2. National Cancer Institute representatives involved with the Early Detection Research Network see the presentation, understand the framework’s potential and hire JPL to consult.
3. The project evolves and CHLA’s Virtual Pediatric Intenstive Care Unit joins the effort to “build a distributed data-sharing network to drive the next generation of clinical decision support for pediatric cancer treatment and research.”
Here’s Ahier’s explanation of why the NASA system makes a difference for the hospital:
The VPICU connects emergency rooms, community hospitals and intensive care units worldwide in a virtual network, extending consultations to even the most remote areas. Using (the JPL technology), clinicians can access data from a network of pediatric hospitals to build an evidence-based foundation for research into childhood cancers.
“The variability in patients in a pediatric ICU is enormous with regards to age, weight and other factors,” says David Kale, a research engineer in the VPICU. “So the question is can we build clinical decision support tools that will help clinicians by augmenting their experience by providing data.”
Disciplined docs turn up on Pfizer payroll
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
New Scientist’s Peter Aldhous and Jim Giles created an interesting mash-up of two popular health stories, disciplined caregivers and conflicts of interest, by matching a set of Pfizer disclosures on payments to doctors and researchers in 2009 with discipline records from the FDA and the country’s most populous states. They found 26 matches on the state level and four from the feds, matches which accounted for about one in every 50 Pfizer-paid doctors in the states they’d investigated.
They assembled a number of anecdotes for the story, but the most telling related to a physician who was disciplined for faulty research related to a Pfizer drug, yet still paid by the company to lecture on it.
Other Pfizer experts ran into trouble during their research. Among them is Thomas Gazda of Scottsdale, Arizona, who was paid to lecture about Geodon after being reprimanded by the FDA over irregularities in his conduct of a trial of the same drug’s use in children and adolescents with bipolar disorder – one of whom was given more than the maximum allowable dose for five days. The FDA had earlier told Pfizer to exclude Gazda’s data from the results submitted by Pfizer during its efforts to win approval to use the drug for this purpose.
AHCJ has extensive resources for folks looking to do both sides of the mashup, with tips for investigating conflicts of interest from John Fauber of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and recommendations for looking into disciplined caregivers from ProPublica’s Charles Ornstein and Tracy Weber.
Google charts health data from CDC, World Bank
Google has removed another step between people and information with the release of its new Public Data Explorer. It’s a service through which Google links neat, tidy and reputable sets of data with a beefed-up version of its chart programs.
Right now it’s limited to 13 data sets, though Google implies that it will continue to expand those offerings based on demand. Those data sets include three that are powered by the CDC’s WONDER data delivery platform.
Data from the World Bank includes international numbers on things such as fertility rates, births attended by skilled health staff, rates of immunization against measles, prevalence of HIV, life expectancy and more. You also can find statistics on the U.S. population from the Census Bureau.
At present, the limited selection mean that it probably won’t be useful for more than a handful of stories, but it’s something to keep an eye on as Google continues to add data and customization options.
Here’s a quick example mapping U.S. cancer rates (circle color) and number of cases (circle size) by state.
NOTE: If you can’t see the visualization, you’ll probably need to upgrade your browser.
‘Gold mine’ of workplace toxicity data released
Filed under: Health data, Hot Health Headline, Public health, Public records
After a long FOIA battle that ended with a federal lawsuit, Adam Finkel, former OSHA director of health standards programs for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (bio and contact information), has “acquired data on some three million samples, taken at about 75,000 locations from 1979 to 2009,” the Center for Public Integrity reports as part of its “Data Mine” series.
The air and “wipe” samples in question were taken to determine workplace exposure to toxic substances. Finkel plans to analyze this data “gold mine” and make it available to the public in an easily digestible format (a project for which he has already secured grant money). At some point, OSHA itself may do the same.
Asked if OSHA plans to make the sampling data public, agency spokeswoman Diana Petterson responded in an e-mail that “it is under consideration and must address certain concerns including the data integrity and the completeness of the data.” Finkel, who left OSHA after accusing the agency of failing to test its own inspectors for dangerous levels of beryllium, is skeptical. “They made it as hard as they possibly could,” he said. “This database is up to 30 years old, and they’ve shown no interest in making it accessible or doing anything useful with it internally.”
The Data Mine series, a collaboration between The Center for Public Integrity and the Sunlight Foundation, will highlight inaccessible or poorly presented information from the federal government.
From the CIA to the CDC, we’ll be looking at data that needs to be public, with regular posts on the Center’s and Sunlight’s websites. We’ll describe each data set, as well as officials’ plans for putting it online – or not.
Blog outlines differences in two health databases
The Emerging Technologies Librarian blog takes a moment to explain why the government maintains both the MedlinePlus and Healthfinder databases, and the differences between the two systems. MedlinePlus is more of an accessible gateway with a more limited scope and stronger editorial consistency, while Healthfinder is more comprehensive and allows deeper investigation. Health care journalists should be familiar with the advantages and disadvantages of each, as both can be helpful when used in the right situation.
Databases, search engine help with research
The Resource Shelf Web site has posted a list of some health and safety databases, plus a search tool that sends queries to PubMed, Harrison’s Online, MerckManual and TRIPDatabase.
Resource Shelf offers descriptions and links to the following:
- Emergency Response Safety and Health Database
- United Network for Organ Sharing Database
- Research Portfolio Online Reporting Tool
- Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System
- National Electronic Injury Surveillance System
- Vivisimo Bio MetaCluster
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