Health Statistics

Publicly available datasets are very decentralized and can be hard to find. When searching for data, start by thinking of what sources might have the data you are looking for. In general, start by looking at specific, relevant data sources, and then broaden your search to wide data repositories as needed.

When looking for data services, consider the following questions:

• Who has the means and ability to collect the data?
• Who would benefit from collecting the data?
• If someone is both willing and able to collect the data do they have a reason to make it public?

Sometimes, the data you are looking for may not be available because it is too complicated or expensive to collect, because the people who have the data do not want to make it public, or simply because the research hasn't been done yet. 

Of course, don't hesitate to reach out to a data librarian if you are having difficulty finding the data you need.

Data comes from all kinds of places, just like research literature. Reliable data is likely to come from:

• Federal government agencies
• State and local governments
• Well-known research nonprofits
• Academic medical centers
• Large hospital systems

Of course, the source is just part of the puzzle. Just like with a research article, an individual dataset can be of good or bad quality. It is important to evaluate a dataset on its own merit, looking at its organization and underlying methodology, to ensure its usefulness.

Data Filters in PubMed and PubMed Central (PMC) allow you to locate journal articles with associated data sets.

For PubMed, conduct a search using your keywords.  Then add in data[filter].
Example of a search string: (diabetes AND data[filter])

The results will be citations with related data links in either the Secondary Source ID field or the LinkOut - Other Literature Resources field.  Both fields are located below the abstract.  These data links may be to records in other NLM databases or external data repositories.

For PubMed Central, you have three different methods for finding specific types of associated datas.

• Use has suppdata[filter] to find articles with associated supplementary material.
• Use has data avail[filter] to find articles that include a data availability or data accessibility statement.
• ​Use has data citations[filter] to find articles that include data citation(s).

Alternatively, use has associated data[filter] to find all articles with any type of data section described above