Understanding Disability and Health through Data Linkage
Article Publication Date
Summary
ASTHO recently released a toolkit exploring how aging, disability, and public health practitioners can understand disability and health through data linkage.
This toolkit features an overview of data linkage as a strategy to address gaps in disability and health data by improving the completeness, consistency, and usefulness of data across populations, highlighting its value for improving population estimates, enhancing service coordination, and deepening understanding of health inequities. While disability data are often collected across healthcare, public health, education, social service, and administrative systems, these data frequently remain disconnected and underutilized. Data linkage provides an opportunity to leverage existing data resources to understand the relationship between disability and health better and to inform agency action.
This toolkit features an overview of data linkage as a strategy to address gaps in disability and health data by improving the completeness, consistency, and usefulness of data across populations, highlighting its value for improving population estimates, enhancing service coordination, and deepening understanding of health inequities. While disability data are often collected across healthcare, public health, education, social service, and administrative systems, these data frequently remain disconnected and underutilized. Data linkage provides an opportunity to leverage existing data resources to understand the relationship between disability and health better and to inform agency action.