Race & Ethnicity Data

Race and ethnicity are key variables used in the field of public health surveillance for monitoring and tracking health status and outcomes of populations. However, over the last decade the collection and use of these traditional variables has come under scrutiny. Central to the arguments are the manner in which race and ethnicity are conceptualized and the lack of standards in terms of how the data elements are defined. This paper describes some of the challenges to collecting and reporting race and ethnicity data in a state that has a large and growing multi-racial and multi-ethnic population base. A model is presented that describes a methodology for incrementally clustering very discrete ethnic sub-populations to ethnic subgroups and eventually to the Office of Management and Budget five race classifications.