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I am new to the world of data science. I was wondering if anyone knew where I can find health datasets? Specifically heart disease data on minorities in the US.

Any suggestions or guidance will be greatly appreciated.

user3426338
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  • ctrl+F the word health on http://asdfree.com/ – Anthony Damico Dec 29 '14 at 19:17
  • If you have more details about your goal that would help. The centers for disease control and prevention (CDC) has some tools; the centers for medicare and medicaid services (CMS) has more data about payments/quality indicators for these conditions; the US department of health and human services (HHS) is probably a good place to look; data.gov may or may not have some of this. Searches using google for "heart disease mashup " may be useful. The NY Times has a good health reporting team. The captions/data attribution on their graphics may be useful. – respectPotentialEnergy Jan 02 '15 at 13:55

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I would recommend taking a look at the Medicare Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS), a nationally representative survey on the health status of individuals that includes patient discharge information. You could also try looking at the National Hospital Discharge Survey (NHDS), which is a selection of patient discharge data from randomly sampled hospitals.

As a health researcher, you'll definitely want to become acquainted with the ICD 9 diagnosis and procedure codes available by fiscal year here. For example, ischemic heart disease is "410**" or "411**". Since you're new to the field, I suggest you seek some in person advice about how to use these two completely different data setups. And it would be worthwhile to become familiar with ICD codes.

Kotebiya
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The CDC's heart disease maps and data might help you if you want a higher level view:

http://www.cdc.gov/heartdisease/maps_statistics.htm

The first link says:

This application allows users to view county-level maps of heart disease and stroke by racial/ethnic group, along with maps of social environmental conditions and health services for the entire United States or for a chosen state or territory.

respectPotentialEnergy
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