Improving Race Data

Maryland Cancer Registry

The Maryland Cancer Registry (MCR) had an excessive number of cases where the patient's race was unknown. This created a problem for meeting the National Program of Cancer Registries (NPCR) and North American Association of Central Cancer Registries (NAACCR) standards, and hindered generation of Maryland statistics by race.

The MCR found that race information was available through the Maryland Motor Vehicle Administration’s (MVA's) Direct Access Record System (DARS). The MCR was granted free access to the DARS.

Over a two- to three-month period in 2008, the MCR staff of four full-time employees identified the race for multiple years of data. These data were updated in the MCR master database, if the primary race field had been coded as unknown. In 2009, two MCR staff reviewed and updated one year of new cancer reports with unknown race in less than one month.

The MCR’s requirements for matching to DARS are last name, first name, and date of birth. If more that one match is found, then the address is added.

Although the DARS assigned a race category to most cancer cases, it had some limitations.

• Only name, gender, date of birth, and address data are available for comparison, and the address in DARS may or may not be the address at diagnosis in the MCR.
• DARS race codes must be recoded to NAACCR race codes before being updated in the MCR database.
• DARS has limited codes and only one race per person; a multiracial DARS code cannot be mapped to a NAACCR code and must be mapped to a less specific race (see table below).

By using the DARS, the MCR reduced the number of patients whose race was unknown, which not only improves the quality of the data submitted to NPCR and NAACCR, but also benefits the state and data requestors who analyze MCR data by race.