April 2010, Issue VIII

NCHS Policy Watch is designed to provide regular updates on congressional and administrative policies that impact NCHS and summarize implications for the broader health community, including researchers, policy analysts, practitioners, industry representatives, patient advocates, and decision makers in the public and private sectors that use NCHS data.

CDC Director Names Management Team

CDC Director Thomas Frieden has named seven new members to his management team, including Stephen Thacker, M.D., who will serve as the deputy director of the new Office of Surveillance, Epidemiology and Laboratory Services. The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) will become a part of this new office. Previously, Thacker lead CDC’s Epidemiology Program Office, where he was responsible for domestic and international training and consultation in epidemiology, statistics, and applied public health.

Other new appointments include:

• Kevin DeCock – Director of the Center for Global Health
• Donna Garland – Associate Director for Communication
• Robin Ikeda – Deputy Director of the Office of Non-communicable Diseases, Injury, and Environmental Health. She is also the acting director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.
• Harold Jaffe – Associate Director for Science
• Rima Khabbaz – Deputy Director for Infectious Diseases
• Bill Nichols – Chief Operating Officer

NCHS Releases “Health, United States, 2009”

NCHS has released “Health, United States, 2009,” its 33rd report to the president and Congress on the health status of Americans. The report contains a chart book and 150 trend tables showing current and historic information on the health of the U.S. population. The 2009 report focuses on determinants and measures of health, and it includes a special section on medical technology. The data show that new technology can lengthen and improve the quality of life. However, questions remain about how much improvement is possible due to constrained resources and increasing costs.

Other highlights from the report include:

• Teenage mothers and their children are more likely to be disadvantaged and have less favorable health status than older new mothers and their children.
• Although overall death rates have declined, racial and ethnic disparities in mortality remain. However, the gap in life expectancy between black and white populations has narrowed.
• Between 1976-1980 and 2005-2006, the prevalence of overweight among preschool-age children 2-5 years of age more than doubled, from 5 percent to 11 percent.
• In 2007, the percentage of persons who reported not receiving needed medical care because of costs varied by geographic region, from 4 percent in the Northeast to 7 percent in the South.
• In 2006, 43 percent of doctor visits were to specialty care physicians, up from 36 percent in 1990.
• From 1988-1994 to 2003-2006, use of antidiabetic drugs among adults aged 45 years and over increased about 50 percent, and the use of statin drugs to lower cholesterol among this age group increased almost tenfold.

The full report and other materials are available at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus.htm.  

Health Reform Seeks to Improve Disparities Data

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed into law on March 23 includes a provision (Sec. 4302) that seeks to enhance data collection and analysis of health disparities. The Act requires the secretary, no later than two years after the enactment of the Act, to ensure that any federally conducted or supported health care or public health program, activity, or survey collects and reports specified demographic data on health disparities, specifically:

• Data on race, ethnicity, sex, primary language, and disability status;
• Data at the smallest geographic level such as state, local, or institutional levels if such data can be aggregated;
• Sufficient data to generate statistically reliable estimate by racial, ethnic, sex, primary language, and disability status subgroups; and
• Any other data deemed appropriate by the secretary to help understand health disparities.

The secretary shall make these data available for additional research, analyses, and dissemination to other federal agencies, nongovernmental entities, and the public, in accordance with any federal agency’s data user agreements.

The Revised U.S. Standard Birth Certificate – Opportunities and Challenges: Archived Webcast Now Available

The Mid Atlantic Public Health Training Center’s session “The Revised U.S. Standard Birth Certificate: Opportunities and Challenges,” with speakers, Dr. Bernard Guyer and Dr. Isabelle Horon, is now available as an archive at: http://www.jhsph.edu/maphtc/training_events/training_archives.  

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