ArticlePLoS medicine2025
Understanding the quality of ethnicity data recorded in health-related administrative data sources compared with Census 2021 in England.
Article in PLoS medicine, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Using classification and regression trees (CART) to investigate unknown ethnicity records in NHS emergency care data.BMJ open · 2026Article
- Review
- Time trends in stroke incidence and modifiable risk factor prevalence in England (2018-2024): A record linkage population-based study.PLoS medicine · 2026Article
- Age, sex and ethnicity changes in creatine kinase and sex- and ethnicity-specific reference intervals of creatine kinase.Clinical medicine (London, England) · 2026Article
- Enhancing population-wide administrative data to better understand mortality risk in underserved groups.SSM - population health · 2026Article
- Heat-related acute kidney injury risk in England: a nationwide case-crossover analysis of 947 342 AKI alerts.Clinical kidney journal · 2026Article
- Paediatric infection hospital admissions in England before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.Epidemiology and infection · 2026Article
- Evaluating the impact of discordant and missing demographic information on population health assessments using linked electronic health records and Census Bureau microdata.PLOS digital health · 2026Article
- Validation of an algorithm for selection of SGLT2 and DPP4 inhibitor therapies in people with type 2 diabetes across major UK ethnicity groups: a retrospective cohort study.The Lancet regional health. Europe · 2026Article
- Inequalities in Preterm Birth in England: A Retrospective National Cohort Study Focusing on Deprivation and Ethnicity, Using Routinely Collected Maternity Hospital Data.BJOG : an international journal of obstetrics and gynaecology · 2025Article
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Authors and funding
17 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundElectronic health records (EHRs) are increasingly used to investigate health inequalities across ethnic groups. While there are some studies showing that the recording of ethnicity in EHR is imperfect, there is no robust evidence on the accuracy between the ethnicity information recorded in various real-world sources and census data. METHODS AND
findingsWe linked primary and secondary care NHS England data sources with Census 2021 data and compared individual-level agreement of ethnicity recording in General Practice Extraction Service (GPES) Data for Pandemic Planning and Research (GDPPR), Hospital Episode Statistics (HES), Ethnic Category Information Asset (ECIA), and Talking Therapies for anxiety and depression (TT) with ethnicity reported in the census. Census ethnicity is self-reported and, therefore, regarded as the most reliable population-level source of ethnicity recording. We further assessed the impact of multiple approaches to assigning a person an ethnic category. The number of people that could be linked to census from ECIA, GDPPR, HES, and TT were 47.4m, 43.5m, 47.8m, and 6.3m, respectively. Across all 4 data sources, the White British category had the highest level of agreement with census (≥96%), followed by the Bangladeshi category (≥93%). Levels of agreement for Pakistani, Indian, and Chinese categories were ≥87%, ≥83%, and ≥80% across all sources. Agreement was lower for Mixed (≤75%) and Other (≤71%) categories across all data sources. The categories with the lowest agreement were Gypsy or Irish Traveller (≤6%), Other Black (≤19%), and Any Other Ethnic Group (≤25%) categories.
conclusionsCertain ethnic categories across all data sources have high discordance with census ethnic categories. These differences may lead to biased estimates of differences in health outcomes between ethnic groups, a critical data point used when making health policy and planning decisions.
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