Race, Ethnicity, and Language Data: Standardization for Health Care Quality Improvement

Institute of Medicine Report

By the Subcommittee on Standardized Collection of Race/Ethnicity Data for Healthcare Quality Improvement Board on Health Care Services, Cheryl Ulmer, Bernadette McFadden, and David R. Nerenz, Editors

The goal of eliminating disparities in health care in the United States remains elusive. Addressing these disparities must begin with the fundamental step of bringing the nature of the disparities and the groups at risk for those disparities to light by collecting health care quality information stratified by race, ethnicity and language data. The purpose of this report is to identify standardized categories for the variables of race, ethnicity, and language that can be used to facilitate the sharing, compilation, and comparison of quality data stratified by the standard categories. 

Contents

Reviewers
  Foreword
  Preface
  Acknowledgments
Summary
1. Introduction
2. Evidence of Disparities among Ethnicity Groups
3. Defining Categorization Needs for Race and Ethnicity Data
4. Defining Language Need and Categories for Collection
5. Improving Data Collection across the Health Care System
6. Implementation
Appendixes
A. Acronyms and Abbreviations
B. Legislation Cited in Report
C. Workshop Agendas
D. Subcommittee Member and Staff Biographies
E. Subcommittee Template: Developing a National Standard Set of Granular Ethnicity Categories and a Rollup Scheme
F. Granular Ethnicities with No Determinate OMB Race Classification
G. Kaiser Permanente: Evolution of Data Collection on Race, Ethnicity, and Language Preference Information
H. Contra Costa Health Plan Language Assistance Database and Ethnicity Categories
I. Subcommittee Template: Developing a National Standard Set of Spoken Language Categories and Coding