Using Statistics

Health data and statistics can be difficult to find. Some of the things that make this so challenging are:

• health data is collected by many government, non-governmental and private agencies and organizations working at the international, national, state and local levels, resulting in a non-centralized pool of data  
• data quality, collection methodology and accessibility will vary.
• data collection and sharing takes time and resources
• a time lag exists between time of collection and availability of data
• data prior to 1956 was not collected in a National Health Survey (may be found in primary sources or in scholarly research articles)

Adapted from: Cornell University Library. Finding Health Data and Statistics: Getting Started. August 19, 2019