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Dear Colleagues Attached information on a paper in the latest issue of Evaluation and Program Planning which may be of interest to some of you David McDaid LSE Health and Social Care Evaluation and Program Planning Volume 26, Issue 1, Pages 1-107 (February 2003) http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/issue/5852-2003-999739998-385417 Elimination of health disparities in racial/ethnic minority communities: developing data indicators to assess the progress of community-based efforts, Pages 11-19 Mark C. Edberg, Frank Y. Wong, Violet Woo and Tuei Doong http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V7V-47PP8J0-9/1/31966e1372eebb7793731515118df0c9 Abstract This paper describes the development of a pilot uniform data set (UDS) intended to serve as the primary data collection mechanism for all grants and standard cooperative agreements funded by the US Office of Minority Health (OMH), within the US Department of Health and Human Services. OMH is mandated by Congress to coordinate Federal agency efforts to improve racial/ethnic minority health status and eliminate disparities in health, health care, and access to care for these populations. The majority of OMH programs are directed to racial/ethnic minority community-based organizations (CBOs), and involve a mixture of health promotion, screening, access to services and treatment, training and education, materials development, case management, capacity-building, development of community linkages, and other such activities in support of Healthy People 2010 goals concerning the elimination of health disparities. A range of OMH-awarded grants and cooperative agreements fund these projects. A key issue has been the need for uniform data across these programs, and the UDS was developed in response to this need. The modular format and content of the UDS was the product of a formative research process involving an advisory panel, focus groups, interviews, site visits and a pilot test aimed at identifying and defining appropriate data elements as well as an overall structure that made sense in terms of providing some form of standardized data across widely disparate projects. The UDS as developed is not only an important accountability and performance monitoring effort for OMH, but also a significant attempt to develop a data collection system that is meaningful for CBOs and the racial/ethnic minority populations they serve. Knowledge gained from the implementation of this system can be applied to general issues of evaluating community-based health programs, and to identifying/assessing the nature of progress with respect to racial/ethnic minority health, beyond its direct application to OMH projects. Author Keywords: Uniform data set; Ethnic minority; Community-based organizations