ReviewHealth services research2006
Use of geocoding and surname analysis to estimate race and ethnicity.
Review in Health services research, 2006. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 88 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
88 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- The quality of social determinants data in the electronic health record: a systematic review.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA · 2021Pooled it
- A systematic literature review on response rates across racial and ethnic populations.Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publiquePooled it
- Can phone-based motivational interviewing improve medication adherence to antiplatelet medications after a coronary stent among racial minorities? A randomized trial.Journal of general internal medicine · 2015Trial
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- Delay in Diabetes Diagnosis After High-Deductible Health Plan Enrollment: A Pre-Post Study with Control.Journal of general internal medicine · 2026Article
- Significant Congenital Cardiovascular Malformations and Falling Birth Rates: The Nevada Experience.Pediatric cardiology · 2026Article
- Decreasing missingness in race and ethnicity data by inclusion of preferred language for mapping to aggregate categories.Health affairs scholar · 2025Article
- Ethnic Differences in Dementia Diagnosis and Treatment in Israel.Journal of clinical medicine · 2025Article
- Effects of Adopting Preventive Drug Lists on Medication Costs and Disparities by Income Over 2 Years: A Natural Experiment for Translation in Diabetes (NEXT-D) Study.Diabetes care · 2025Article
- Addressing discretization-induced bias in demographic prediction.PNAS nexus · 2025Article
- Inferring Unknown Race in Central Cancer Registries.Journal of registry management · 2025Article
- Methods for retrospectively improving race/ethnicity data quality: a scoping review.Epidemiologic reviews · 2023Article
- Incidence and Survival for Patients Diagnosed With Breast, Colorectal, and Lung Cancer in an Integrated System.The Permanente journal · 2023Article
- Assessing the validity of race and ethnicity coding in administrative Medicare data for reporting outcomes among Medicare advantage beneficiaries from 2015 to 2017.Health services research · 2023Article
- Utilization and Spending With Preventive Drug Lists for Asthma Medications in High-Deductible Health Plans.JAMA network open · 2023Article
- Race and ethnicity data for first, middle, and surnames.Scientific data · 2023Article
- Equal accuracy for Andrew and Abubakar-detecting and mitigating bias in name-ethnicity classification algorithms.AI & society · 2023Article
- Addressing census data problems in race imputation via fully Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding and name supplements.Science advances · 2022Article
- Health Care Utilization Trends Across the Transition Period in a National Cohort of Adolescents and Young Adults With Type 1 Diabetes.Diabetes care · 2022Article
- Diabetes Microvascular Disease Diagnosis and Treatment After High-Deductible Health Plan Enrollment.Diabetes care · 2022Article
28 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo review two indirect methods, geocoding and surname analysis, for estimating race/ethnicity as a means for health plans to assess disparities in care. STUDY
designReview of published articles and unpublished data on the use of geocoding and surname analyses. PRINCIPAL
findingsFew published studies have evaluated use of geocoding to estimate racial and ethnic characteristics of a patient population or to assess disparities in health care. Three of four studies showed similar estimates of the proportion of blacks and one showed nearly identical estimates of racial disparities, regardless of whether indirect or more direct measures (e.g., death certificate or CMS data) were used. However, accuracy depended on racial segregation levels in the population and region assessed and geocoding was unreliable for identifying Hispanics and Asians/Pacific Islanders. Similarly, several studies suggest surname analyses produces reasonable estimates of whether an enrollee is Hispanic or Asian/Pacific Islander and can identify disparities in care. However, accuracy depends on the concentrations of Asians or Hispanics in areas assessed. It is less accurate for women and more acculturated and higher SES persons due intermarriage, name changes, and adoption. Surname analysis is not accurate for identifying African Americans. Recent unpublished analyses suggest plans can successfully use a combined geocoding/surname analyses approach to identify disparities in care in most regions. Refinements based on Bayesian methods may make geocoding/surname analyses appropriate for use in areas where the accuracy is currently poor, but validation of these preliminary results is needed.
conclusionsGeocoding and surname analysis show promise for estimating racial/ethnic health plan composition of enrollees when direct data on major racial and ethnic groups are lacking. These data can be used to assess disparities in care, pending availability of self-reported race/ethnicity data.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.