Health Data Experts Push for More National Health Registries

August 06, 2008
Health Data Experts Push for More National Health Registries

                               
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Health data experts contend that more national health registries are needed to track health trends and research diseases that are increasingly afflicting U.S. residents, the Baltimore Sun reports.

CDC established the first national registry -- the National Program of Cancer Registries -- in the 1990s and the National Cancer Institute established the Surveillance Epidemiology and End Results registry in certain parts of the U.S. in 1973.

Cancer registries include data such as age, race, gender, county of residence, type of cancer, treatment and outcome for patients.

Each state maintains its own cancer registry -- usually managed by the state health department or universities -- under the guidance of standards established by the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries. The goal is to collect data on every cancer patient in the U.S.

Experts would like to see such intensive data collected on diseases other than cancer, such as Alzheimer's disease, asthma, autism and other conditions.

Fifteen states have birth defect registries and five states are set to establish registries for muscular dystrophy, according to the Sun.

The databases are a vital public health resource, Thomas Burke, an epidemiologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health, said. Burke added, "Cancer is important ... but we're just scratching the surface on so many other chronic diseases and conditions that we really don't know about" (Roylance, Baltimore Sun, 8/5).


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