Research Access to Death Records Contract Number: NIH Proposal #10001666 CAN 8

NIA支持对老年人口的几项纵向研究，这些研究是受资助者和联邦政府行为和社会的关键基础设施。这些研究得益于及时获得死亡记录，以确定哪些受访者已经去世，从而可以有效地跟踪调查/试验参与者。死亡记录还使研究人员能够跟踪幸存的家庭成员，收集有关临终计划的信息，并确认年龄报告。社会保障局死亡主档案（DMF）历来是一个及时和全面的死亡事实数据来源，可供调查研究和临床试验社区访问。然而，2011年11月获悉，《社会保障法》中的细节限制查阅完整的DMF，禁止社会保障局披露国家提供的死亡记录。美国国家卫生统计中心（National Center for Health Statistics）创建的全国死亡指数（National Death Index）虽然有价值，也很全面，但对于研究人员来说，使用它进行搜索更昂贵，也更麻烦，而且数据不像DMF那样定期更新，这使得它成为某些类型研究的劣质来源。国家统计局与国家统计局签订合同，就研究获取死亡记录问题召开规划会议。会议将探讨如何改善研究获得全面和及时的死亡事实数据的途径，并侧重于如何使该系统更具成本效益和可用于研究目的。

NIA supports several longitudinal studies of older populations that serve as key infrastructure to behavioral and social for grantees and the federal government. These studies benefit from access to timely death records to determine which respondents have passed away so survey/trial participants can be efficiently tracked. Death records also enable researchers to follow-up with surviving family members to gather information on end-of-life planning and confirm age reports. The Social Security Administration Death Master File (DMF) has historically been a timely and comprehensive source of fact-of-death data accessible by the survey research and clinical trial community. However, in November 2011 it was learned that details in the Social Security Act restricted access to the complete DMF, prohibiting SSA from disclosing state provided death records. The National Death Index created by the National Center for Health Statistics, though valuable and comprehensive is more expensive and cumbersome for researchers to conduct searches with and the data are not updated as regularly as the DMF, making it an inferior source for some types of research. NIA has contract with CNSTAT to conduct a planning meeting on research access to death records. The meeting will explore the ways to improve research access to comprehensive and timely fact-of-death data and focus on ways to make the system more cost-effective and accessible for research purposes.