Integrated Demographic and Health Survey Data for Population Health Research

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Project Summary/Abstract This proposal seeks continued funding to expand and enhance IPUMS DHS, which eliminates barriers to over- time and cross-national analyses with the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS), the world's longest running survey series on health and fertility in low- and middle-income countries. With powerful data discovery tools, thousands of harmonized variables, easy-to-access documentation, and social and environmental context variables linked to individual records, IPUMS DHS dramatically reduces the cost and increases the range, rigor, and reproducibility of research on population health. The temporal and geographic scope of the IPUMS DHS database enables cutting-edge population health research on topics including fertility, contraception, neonatal and under-five mortality, low birth weights, child stunting and wasting, diarrhea, nutrition, food safety, obesity, risky sexual behavior, access to health care, women’s empowerment, intimate partner violence, water and sanitation, and the impact of armed conflict on reproductive choices. The proposed innovations to and expansion of the database in the next phase will exponentially increase the potential research topics enabled by IPUMS DHS. The continuation project has five specific aims: Aim 1. Achieve global coverage. IPUMS DHS now incorporates microdata from 170 DHS surveys from 41 African and Asian countries, but it does not yet cover Latin America, the Caribbean, Central and East Asia, Eastern Europe, or Oceania. The next phase will add survey series from new regions, while also adding the latest surveys from Africa and South Asia. Aim 2. Unlock comparative research across IPUMS global health databases. IPUMS DHS will become even more powerful in the next phase when the database is made interoperable with other global health data series, such as UNICEF’s Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). When coupled with data from MICS, almost 90 percent of DHS countries will have three or more samples to compare across time, and 98 percent will have data from the 21st century. Aim 3. Enable cutting-edge research on the impact of social and environmental context on health. The third project phase will triple the number of social and environmental context variables in IPUMS DHS. With these new data, researchers will conduct path-breaking research, such as global comparisons of the impact of rising sea levels on the health of individuals in communities near coastlines. Aim 4. Expedite data analysis by simplifying or eliminating researchers’ data management tasks. Proposed enhancements will enable users to filter samples based on topical content, variable availability, and country characteristics. We will also develop an Application Programming Interface (API), allowing users to automate the tasks of defining and executing data extracts. Aim 5. Support and expand our user community. IPUMS DHS is committed to democratizing access to population data. The project will continue to provide robust individualized user support, webinars, and workshops at key conferences, while introducing online tutorials and code-sharing opportunities.