Building an Equitable Future Through Data Disaggregation
Tina J. Kauh, Terry Ao Minnis, Meeta Anand, Maya J. Berry, Rosalind Gold
Abstract
Race and ethnicity data are so critical for understanding the health and well-being of everyone living in our nation.We are in the midst of an exciting time, where there is a major opportunity to actually impact how race and ethnicity data are collected, analyzed, reported, and disseminated to promote greater health equity.As we all know, the Office of Management and Budget, which is also known as the OMB, is considering for the first time in >25 years whether to update its current minimum standards for race and ethnicity.I want to keep saying that word, minimum standards, because I think that is really critical.I will start by asking Meeta, can you explain why this effort by the OMB to revise federal race and ethnicity minimum standards is so important?Ms. Anand: So, you already touched on part of it.The last time that OMB issued new guidelines on the collection of race and ethnicity data at the federal government level was in 1997.Our perception of who we are, both as a nation and as individuals, has shifted since that time.But on top of that, what we also see is that it is not just, when we say, is the federal government that is collecting the data, think about what that means and how that trickles down.Anyone reporting to the federal government is adhering to those standards.It means that people often default to those standards.Because they think someone else went and spent time and put effort behind this, and these must be the right categories to use.So, what this really represents to us is an opportunity to make sure that certain communities who feel that they are not seen or reflected in the data can then start being seen or reflected in the data by the categories that are provided for people to choose among and being able to self-identify.Why does this matter?Because all of us here are deeply committed to understanding and remedying inequities we see in our society that exist on racial and ethnic lines.They exist on other lines too, but we are focusing on racial and ethnic lines.If we are able to have more accurate data that are presented on the basis of race and ethnicity, we are then able to more accurately identify inequities, and then hopefully, target inequities in our policy and programmatic practices.