Hi, we are Michele D Sadler and Hope Gilbert from Deloitte’s Evaluation and Research for Action Center of Excellence, along with Shilpa Londhe from New York University. As evaluation consultants, we know that social determinants of health (SDOH) data are critical in identifying and evaluating the scope and magnitude of non-medical experiences which influence health. Most often, researchers use SDOH data on area-level estimates and from disparate sources to co-locate social and health information for analysis. These estimates and data sources have provided significant insight into geospatially in the identification of communities and areas which have been burdened by persistent disparities in a wide range of health outcomes.
Lesson Learned
Through our evaluation and research, we have found that additional insight can be obtained from leveraging the individual-level longitudinal national data sets (see examples below). This insight can include: (1) the potential to capture dynamic lived experiences which can be missing from aggregated data sources or may not be optimal for addressing a specific research question, (2) the potential to link individual data to household characteristics, shared experiences, and community and area-level data which align with the ecological model.
These data are sourced via federally sponsored single-source surveys that collect social and health care information and are transparent in methods and publicly available to evaluators without a paywall. This level of public access promotes equitable data access to evaluation practitioners while also generating additional evidence to inform decision-making at all levels.
Hot Tips
- National data sets, like the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), and National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) contain self-reported individual-level SDOH data elements and have the potential to capture within year variations in SDOH experiences.
- Be sure to watch for our Summer 2024 white paper that further discusses the utility of these individualized data sets, supports the investigation of contemporary health services research questions, and presents examples of their use.
Have you incorporated publicly available data sets into your evaluation and/or research efforts? We would love to hear from you about your successes, challenges, and lessons learned. Please share your experiences with us in the comment box below.
The American Evaluation Association is hosting the Cluster, Multi-Site, and Multi-Level Evaluation (CMME) TIG Week. The CMME TIG is encompasses methodologies and tools for designs that address single interventions implemented at multiple sites, multiple interventions implemented at different sites with shared goals, and the qualitative and statistical treatments of data for these designs, including meta-analyses, statistical treatment of nested data, and data reduction of qualitative data. The contributions all this week to AEA365 come from our CMME TIG members. Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this AEA365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the AEA365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an AEA365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to AEA365@eval.org. AEA365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.