Faculty, staff and students at Cornell now have full, free and around-the-clock access to more than 400 health and nutrition data sets from the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

"The NCHS selects schools with a broad program of teaching and research in the area of public health or demography to participate in this program," said Edward Frongillo, director of Statistical Consulting in Cornell's Division of Nutritional Sciences (DNS) and Colleges of Human Ecology and Agriculture and Life Sciences. Frongillo's office will administer the new NCHS Health Data Program with the Cornell Institute for Social and Economic Research (CISER). "Allowing us to join the program, which now includes 69 schools, means that the NCHS recognizes Cornell and DNS as having a public health program that justifies this relationship." NCHS collects and disseminates data on health, nutrition and vital events, including food frequency and nutrient intake, the onset and diagnosis of illness and disability, the use of health care, and birth, marriage, divorce, aging and death. Frequently used data sets include the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys (NHANES I, II and III) which permit analytic studies that take advantage of the large amount of health and nutrition information from more than 20,000 persons. With the National Health Examination Surveys, these data may be used to track national trends in health and nutrition over the last 30 years, including changes in the prevalence of high cholesterol, obesity and hypertension.

• The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey I Epidemiological Followup Study;
• NHANES Mortality Followup Studies;
• National Health Interview Survey;
• National Health Interview Survey on Aging; " National Health Interview Survey on Health Promotion and Disease Prevention;
• National Health Interview Survey on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements;
• National Health Interview Survey on Cancer Epidemiology and Cancer Control;
• National Health Interview Survey on Youth Behavior Supplement.

Other data sets focus on births, deaths, marriage, divorce, family growth, hospital discharges, nursing homes, long-term care, ambulatory medical care and medical care utilization expenditures, among others.

"These secondary data sets are increasingly important in research as the quality and quantity of these data improve, and because funding for primary data collection is difficult to obtain," Frongillo said.

His office, Statistical Consulting, provides support in using the data for statistical analysis. Expertise includes survey research, complex sampling and implementing statistical analysis. Consultants also can provide access to software designed to handle survey data with complex designs.

Cara Olsen of Statistical Consulting is the Cornell liaison for the NCHS Health Data Program and the data archivist who will obtain the data sets and documentation from NCHS on tape or CD-ROM. She can provide information about available data and can order additional NCHS data. The data sets will be sent to CISER and copied onto the Gaea shared computer. CISER staff have expertise in handling large data sets and also can provide consulting about access to and use of the material.

DNS and CISER also have health and nutrition data from other agencies such as the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals, for example, describes diet and food consumption behavior and assesses nutritional content of diets. CISER also maintains an extensive archive of social, economic and demographic data.