A. Search Tips

Health statistics share some characteristics that make identification and retrieval a challenge. These characteristics of data collection and analysis include the following:

Decentralized, paralleling the health care system the statistics are intended to measure
Expensive in terms of funding and personnel
Variable in collection methods, period or place of collection
Substantial gap between time of collection and analysis and time of distribution to researchers
Difficult to describe using subject headings.

These factors influence who is likely to collect, analyze and publish the data as well as the development of your search strategy.

When you look for appropriate journal articles and books to fill your information needs, you are using familiar secondary sources such as catalogs and indexes. In view of the problems of identifying health statistics with these tools, you will make more effective use of your time by going directly to the source rather than beginning with the secondary tools. Going directly to the source is also a good idea when you use the Web for your research. Your evaluative skills of any Web resource are important here too. For a review of the criteria, see Evaluation of Internet Resources.

B. Primary Sources

Producers of health statistics may be grouped into three broad categories; government agencies, professional/nonprofit associations, and research institutes.

1. Government Agencies

These groups collect analyze and distribute vital statistics as well as data on the morbidity and mortality from notifiable or reportable diseases. Under legal mandate, the states collect the data from municipalities or counties and forward it to the National Center for Health Statistics and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The NCHS and CDC then forward the data to the National Institutes and other DHHS agencies to support their programs.

National Center for Health Statistics. Start with FASTATS A to Z to access more specific data.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. One frequently used resource is the MMWR (Mortality and Morbidity Weekly Report). For other data sets and reports, start with CDC WONDER.

National Institutes of Health: Institutes, Centers and Offices.

Agency for Health Care Policy and Research. The Healthcare Cost & Utilization Project (HCUP) provides consolidated data for selected states, including New Jersey, from the largest collection of hospital care data in the U.S.

New Jersey Center for Health Statistics. This site includes summary data for the state and county as well as the past six years of New Jersey Health Statistics. The Health Statistics provide text analysis of vital statistics and communicable disease tables.

Municipality-level data is offered for births and deaths including cause. Any further municipal level data is available only by phone request to the appropriate state office.

Two other offices in the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services' Epidemiology Division, Cancer Epidemiology and Communicable Diseases, include health statistics on their Web pages.

AIDS statistics to the county level are available in the Division of AIDS Prevention and Control semi-annual newsletter.

2. Professional/Nonprofit Associations

Look for links to statistics, scientific sources, or information for researchers or information for health professionals. A government sponsored search engine, healthfinder will help you locate information from government and professional/nonprofit web sites, clearinghouses, and academic center.

Professional

American Medical Association

American Nurses Association

American Public Health Association

Disease related

American Cancer Society

American Diabetes Association

American Heart Association

American Lung Association

3. Research Institutes and Foundations

Some foundations collect statistics or conduct their own analyses to support their mission. Other institutes investigate public policy issues or conduct research under contract and then distribute the results. If your area of interest coincides with the work of the foundation or institute, you may find relevant data. Try a site search on your subject.

Annie E. Casey Foundation

Rand Institute

Research Triangle Institute

Urban Insititute

C. Secondary Sources

The University Libraries offer journal and statistical indexes on government related, medical or nursing subjects. All databases: Rutgers-restricted Access

CINAHL. (Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature)

HealthSTAR. (Health Services, Technology, Administration, and Research) (see Medline search tip below)

Medline. If you're using the mapping feature for subject headings, try using the subheading, Epidemiology, with disease subject headings and the subheading, Statistical and numerical data, with nondisease subject headings.

LexisNexis Statistical. An index of statistical tables as they appear in journal articles and government documents. Links to the tables are included for some citations. Liberal use of the truncation symbol (!) with your search terms seems to increase results.

D. Establishing the Context

The health statistics you've worked so hard to find are difficult to interpret without information on the nation's population. Go directly to the Census Bureau and select American Factfinder from the sidebar. You'll have access to place specific data from both the 1990 and 2000 decennial censuses. You may also try FedStats, "gateway to statistics from over 100 U.S. Federal agencies."

You can also make your own comparisons among the states or between state health statistics and national data, by using Kaiser Family Foundation's State Health Facts Online.

E. Locating More Health Statistics Sites

The staff at the University of Michigan Documents Center have created an annotated, comprehensive listing of health statistics sites: Statistical Resources on the Web: Health is organized by subject and updated regularly.