Authors: Jonathan R Sugarman, MD, Robert Soderbeig, Jane E. Gordon,, Frederick P. Rivara

Publication Year: 2019

Last Updated: 2019-09-30

Journal: American Journal of Public Health

Keywords: racial misclassification, injury rates, AI/AN disease surveillance, vital records, IHS linkage

Abstract: The Oregon Injury Registry is a population-based surveillance system for injuries resulting either in death or in hospital admission for at least 1 calendar day. The Portland Area IHS maintains a computer file of Oregon residents who have registered for services with it. To examine how inconsistent racial classification between the two data sets affected estimated injury rates among American Indians, we calculated age-adjusted rates of injury using three methods. In 1989 and 1990, 301 entries (hospital admissions or fatalities) in the Oregon Injury Registry were coded as American Indian. Of these, 133 (44.2%) were not matched to the IHS patient registration file. An additional 89 persons who were coded as a race other than American Indian on the registry were linked to the IHS file. Two cases coded as American Indian in the registry were listed as non-American Indian in the IHS file. Thus, the number of cases in the registry that were identified as American Indian in at least one of the data sets increased by 29.6% (n = 390) after the data linkage.

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Source: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.83.5.681