Using a Vital Records Database to Obtain Race and Ethnicity Data

Nevada Central Cancer Registry

Before accessing the Vital Records files beyond 2008, the missing race rate for diagnosis year 2008 incidence cases was more than 6%. All other data completeness and data quality measures were within the certification limits for CDC's National Program of Cancer Registries and the North American Association of Central Cancer Registries.

Research was first done with the usual resources available to the Nevada Central Cancer Registry (NCCR), such as hospital discharge data and pathology reports, with some success. Follow-back was then done to find the missing information. This process was successful, but the percentage of missing race data was still beyond certification limits.

Since the NCCR has limited access to the Office of Vital Records database, the registry decided to research patients who may have died in 2009 and 2010. This had never been done before. Each patient with missing race and ethnicity information was searched for in the Vital Records database. We found that a large number of cancer patients were diagnosed in 2008 and died in 2009 or 2010. These corrections decreased our missing race and ethnicity percentage by more than 3%, bringing our data within publication and certification standards in all categories. Only 2.72% of cases were missing race and ethnicity data in the November 2010 data submission.

In testing the theory that we may be able to gather missing race and ethnicity information from death records, we realized that this is a very valuable resource for future years of data processing and reporting. The NCCR is implementing this new practice into its data quality and completeness procedures.

By using this resource, the NCCR data are more complete and have the quality needed for research and for our partners who use the data for cancer education and prevention efforts.