| Cindy Zhang, Jessie Parker, Yeats Ye, Cordell Golden |
The National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has a long-established data linkage program that integrates NCHS health survey data with vital records and other administrative data to expand the analytic potential of both the survey and administrative data. Integrating survey and administrative data provides a powerful mechanism for creating policy-relevant data resources to support the examination of factors that can influence disability, chronic disease, health care utilization, morbidity, and mortality. The NCHS survey data provide a rich source of information on health behaviors, health conditions, healthcare access and utilization, and socioeconomic status. When integrated with death certificate information from the National Death Index, data users are able to explore the association between these factors and mortality.
To demonstrate this potential, the SAS Viya AI and Analytic Platform was used to explore data from the public-use 2012-2018 National Health Interview Survey Linked Mortality Files (with mortality follow-up through 2019). PROC SURVEYFREQ and PROC SURVEYPHREG were used for the analysis to assess the relationship between the level of education attainment and mortality for adults aged 25 and over at the time of the survey. PROC SGPLOT and PROC SGPANEL were applied to visualize the key variables (education level and mortality status) and the outcomes (hazard ratios) across age stratified subgroups and top causes of death. The findings from the analysis visually illustrated the reduced risk of mortality associated with higher education levels. This project demonstrates how the NCHS Linked Mortality Files can be used to explore associations between socioeconomic factors and risk of mortality and how the procedures available in SAS Viya can serve as powerful tools for data analysis and visualizations. |