National Center for Health Statistics

NCHS is the federal government's principal vital health statistics agency. NCHS represents an investment in broad-based, fundamental public health and health policy statistics. The data maintained by NCHS is critical to the research performed by AcademyHealth's members. For example, NCHS provides the data for:

• Quarterly tracking of health insurance and access to care, important in understanding the impact of public policy and the economy on children and families;
• Measuring the health status of Americans and how it changes, a critical element in determining the value we get as a nation from our investment in health;
• Understanding trends in the use of health care services, including the extent to which new medical technology is adopted, the burden placed on the health care system by different diseases, and the ways in which prescription drugs are prescribed and used;
• Monitoring the capacity and performance of our health care system by, for example, tracking waiting times in emergency departments and measuring unmet health care needs;
• Focusing policy and health programs on issues of greatest importance by providing a credible, scientific basis for understanding the magnitude of problems, and by helping generate hypotheses for health services and biomedical research; and
• Measuring and understanding differentials between different groups in the population, including racial and ethnic differences in health, in order to help identify strategies for narrowing these gaps.

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