SynthesisJournal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA2021
The quality of social determinants data in the electronic health record: a systematic review.
Synthesis in Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association : JAMIA, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 95 papers, 4 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
95 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pooled it
- Multiplicative Impact of Adverse Social Determinants of Health on Outcomes in Lupus Nephritis: A Meta-analysis and Systematic Review.Arthritis care & research · 2024Pooled it
- Data Quality-Driven Improvement in Health Care: Systematic Literature Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Pooled it
- The validity of electronic health data for measuring smoking status: a systematic review and meta-analysis.BMC medical informatics and decision making · 2024Pooled it
- Effect of Patient Characteristics on Uptake of Screening Using a Mailed Human Papillomavirus Self-sampling Kit: A Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Clinical Trial.JAMA network open · 2022Trial
- Article
- Race and Ethnicity Data in the Electronic Health Records: New Insights Through Comparison with American Community Survey Microdata.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2026Article
- Scalable extraction of social determinants of health from clinical notes in a sepsis cohort using instruction-tuned language models.JAMIA open · 2026Article
- Bias and Fairness Across the Healthcare AI Lifecycle: A Clinician-Oriented Review.Balkan medical journal · 2026Review
- Potential for Bias in Social Needs Data Collection and Screening Activities in Health Care Settings.JAMA health forum · 2026Article
- Co-designing an Outpatient Clinical Decision Support Prototype for Managing Social Risks in Patients Living with Dementia.Applied clinical informatics · 2026Article
- An operational target trial emulation framework for causal inference using electronic health record data.NPJ digital medicine · 2026Review
- Causal Inference in Health Disparities Research.Annual review of public health · 2026Review
- Developing a Suicide Risk Prediction Algorithm Using Electronic Health Record Data in Mental Health Care: Real-World Case Study.JMIR medical informatics · 2026Article
- Nonrandom Missingness in Child Race and Ethnicity Records and the US Federal Data Standards: Pooled Analysis of Community-Based Child Health Studies.JMIR public health and surveillance · 2025Article
- Digital Health Technologies for Screening and Identifying Unmet Social Needs: Scoping Review.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- Synthetic data, synthetic trust: navigating data challenges in the digital revolution.The Lancet. Digital health · 2025Review
- Advancing Health Equity Through Primary Care: Protocol for the Spread, Scale, and Multimethod Developmental Evaluation of the Deep End Canada Network.JMIR research protocols · 2025Article
- Documentation of social determinants of health for patients with type 2 diabetes in Epic Cosmos.JAMIA open · 2025Article
- Testing regular expression searches and machine learning models to determine housing instability and low income status from primary care electronic medical record data in Toronto, Ontario.BMC public health · 2025Article
35 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
3 authors.
Funding
Abstract
objectiveThe aim of this study was to collect and synthesize evidence regarding data quality problems encountered when working with variables related to social determinants of health (SDoH). MATERIALS AND
methodsWe conducted a systematic review of the literature on social determinants research and data quality and then iteratively identified themes in the literature using a content analysis process.
resultsThe most commonly represented quality issue associated with SDoH data is plausibility (n = 31, 41%). Factors related to race and ethnicity have the largest body of literature (n = 40, 53%). The first theme, noted in 62% (n = 47) of articles, is that bias or validity issues often result from data quality problems. The most frequently identified validity issue is misclassification bias (n = 23, 30%). The second theme is that many of the articles suggest methods for mitigating the issues resulting from poor social determinants data quality. We grouped these into 5 suggestions: avoid complete case analysis, impute data, rely on multiple sources, use validated software tools, and select addresses thoughtfully. DISCUSSION: The type of data quality problem varies depending on the variable, and each problem is associated with particular forms of analytical error. Problems encountered with the quality of SDoH data are rarely distributed randomly. Data from Hispanic patients are more prone to issues with plausibility and misclassification than data from other racial/ethnic groups.
conclusionConsideration of data quality and evidence-based quality improvement methods may help prevent bias and improve the validity of research conducted with SDoH data.
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What OpenQuestion holds
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.