Conduct Your Own Public Health Research (posted 6/14)

The Kaiser Family Foundation has produced an online tutorial that provides an overview of how individuals and organizations can use online public health data sources to answer questions about health care and health policy.  For small community-based organizations that are looking to collect data on health in the nation, their state, city, or community but have no resources that can be dedicated to hiring a data analyst or purchasing expensive software, this tutorial teaches individuals how they themselves can collect and analyze the needed data.  Additionally, rather than relying on secondary sources, organizations can now access primary data to find and present and numbers that are unique to your community, population of focus, or health condition.  Using the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS); AHRQ’s Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS); and USAID’s Development’s Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), Anthony Damico, M.H.S., statistical analyst for the Foundation, provides an overview of how individuals can use 'online query tools' to answer health care and health policy questions. To access the online tutorial, "Conducting Research with Online Data Query Tools: A Primer" click here.  For data sources where raw datasets and statistics on health policy topics can be accessed click here.

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