Other Resources

Thousands of datasets that may be useful for researchers, many of which are indexed in other compendia available on the internet.  Many focus on a particular subject area.  Others are very comprehensive but provide only minimal description of each included dataset.  Links to high-value compendia are provided below.

Other dataset compendia, repositories, and resources

National Information Center on Health Services Research and Health Care Technology (NICHSR)

• This group of sites provides links to a wide variety of data tools and statistics, including research datasets, data repositories, health statistics, survey instruments, and more.  It is sponsored by the National Library of Medicine, and includes:
  • Data tools (including datasets and data repositories) and statistics
    • http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrinfo/datasites.html
  • Descriptions of health services research datasets
    • http://wwwcf.nlm.nih.gov/hsrr_search/browse_topics.cfm?TOPIC_SUBSET=PHSR
  • Keyword-searchable list of over 100 health services research datasets
    • http://wwwcf.nlm.nih.gov/hsrr_search/index.cfm
  • Literature and guidelines for health services research
    • http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrinfo/literaturesites.html
  • Grants and funding
    • http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrinfo/grantsites.html
  • Training and education
    • http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hsrinfo/trainingsites.html
  • Validated survey instruments and tools (see “By title”)
    • http://wwwcf.nlm.nih.gov/hsrr_search/browse_resources.cfm
  • Specialized PubMed searches on healthcare quality and costs
    • http://www.nlm.nih.gov/nichsr/hedges/search.html

Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR)

World’s largest archive of digital social science data, including many datasets with extensive information on health and health care.  ICPSR includes many sub-archives on specific topic areas, including minority health, international data, substance abuse and mental health, and more.     

• List of sub-archives within ICPSR
  • http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/studies
• Health and Medical Care Archive
  • A collection of datasets funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, with special focus on health care providers, cost / access to health care, substance abuse and health, and chronic health conditions.  This archive is housed within ICPSR.
  • http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/HMCA/
• National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging
  • Funded by the National Institute on Aging, this archive obtains and disseminates data related to geronotological research.  It is housed within ICPSR.
  • http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/NACDA/

Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce

• This site provides links to a variety of national, state, and local health and public health datasets.  It also provides links to sites providing a wide variety of health statistics, information on health information technology and standards, and other resources.  It is sponsored by a collaboration of U.S. government agencies, public health organizations and health sciences libraries.
• http://phpartners.org/health_stats.html

Roadmap K-12 Data Resource Center (UCSF)

• This site presents brief summaries of approximately 40 data sets, including survey data sets, utilization and administrative data sets, and population data
• http://www.epibiostat.ucsf.edu/courses/RoadmapK12/PublicDataSetResources/

List of datasets from the American Sociologic Association

• List of datasets and dataset compendia compiled by the American Sociologic Association
• http://www.asanet.org/research/data_resources.cfm

Canadian Research Data Centers – Data Sets and Research Tools (Canada)

• Links to datasets available for analysis through Canada’s Research Data Centres (RDC) program
• http://www.rdc-cdr.ca/datasets-and-surveys

Directory of Health and Human Services Data Resources (U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services)

• This site provides brief information and links to almost all datasets from NIH, CDC, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), AHRQ, FDA, and other agencies of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
• http://aspe.hhs.gov/datacncl/DataDir/index.shtml

Publicly Available Databases from the National Institute on Aging (NIA)

• Information on datasets sponsored by the National Institute on Aging.  This includes:
• Longitudinal studies sponsored by NIA
  • http://nihlibrary.ors.nih.gov/nia/ps/niadb.asp
• NIA-sponsored datasets for aging-related behavioral and social sciences (many of these include health information)
  • http://www.nia.nih.gov/research/dbsr/publicly-available-datasets
• For more information about datasets on aging, also see the National Archive of Computerized Data on Aging (listed above under the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research - ICPSR)

Publicly Available Databases from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)

• Information on data available from cohort studies and clinical trials sponsored by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. 
• http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/resources/index.htm

National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Data Warehouse

• This site links to a variety of datasets from the National Center for Health Statistics, several of which are profiled above as highlighted datasets.  These datasets are available for downloading at no cost.  For links to individual datasets, follow the “Surveys and Data Collection Systems” links on the left side of the page.
• http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/surveys.htm

Medicare Research Data Assistance Center (RESDAC); and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Research, Statistics, Data & Systems

• These sites link to a variety of datasets from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).  Datasets listed in each site have partial – but incomplete – overlap with one another.
• www.resdac.umn.edu/Available_CMS_Data.asp
• www.cms.hhs.gov/home/rsds.asp

Veterans Affairs (VA) data

• A series of datasets using administrative and computerized clinical data to describe care provided in the VA health care system, including information on outpatient visits, pharmacy data, inpatient data, cost data, and more.  With some exceptions, use is generally restricted to researchers with VA affiliations (this can include a co-investigator with a VA affiliation)
• www.virec.research.va.gov/index.htm