Health effectiveness research depends heavily on large-scale healthcare administrative databases (e.g. health insurance claims data, discharge abstract data), survey databases, disease registry data and geocoding. The enactment of the HIPAA Privacy Rule has created increased emphasis on and new interpretations of confidentiality protection and there are restrictions on use of identifiable data. The Center maintains a secure network server which can be accessed from center computers or other approved sites for analysis of restricted use databases.

Complexity of these databases leads to substantial investment to acquire databases, understand data elements and their quality, and develop the necessary programming techniques. Efficiency is increased through the Center where several researchers at the same institution can make use of centralized data files staffed by the Center’s knowledgeable data managers.

Based in the College of Public Health building, the Center is in close proximity to the data managers, project leaders and statisticians. Most people remote into our server from their work computers, but the Center does have desk space and workstations for affiliated graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting researchers to use. HERCe also has a wide variety of value-added datasets which have been created to help make the complex databases accessible to less sophisticated analysts. In addition to providing resources for data analysis, the Center contains space for affiliated researchers and their staff to hold research meetings and conduct surveys by telephone or mail.