Epidemiology and Beyond: Public Accessible Research Data

Public Accessible Research Data

DataFerrett is a data analysis and extraction tool.
U.S. Population and Housing Unit Estimates: The Census Bureau produces estimates of the population for the United States.
American Community Survey (ACS) helps local officials, community leaders, and businesses understand the changes taking place in their communities. It is the premier source for detailed population and housing information about our nation. Handbooks for Data Users

Current Population Survey (CPS), sponsored jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), is the primary source of labor force statistics for the population of the United States (Reading CPS Data with SAS, SPSS, or Stata).

Global Health Data Exchange has a comprehensive catalog of surveys, censuses, vital statistics, and other health-related data
US CDC data

Vital Statistics Online Data Portal
CDC WONDER online databases utilize a rich ad-hoc query system for the analysis of public health data. Reports and other query systems are also available. National Vital Statistics System collects and disseminates the Nation's official vital statistics. You can download Vital Statistics data files from the CDC website. The CDC Scientific Data Repository (also known as the Scientific Data Archives) provides storage and access to archive CDC data sets and documentation.
Mortality multiple cause file User's Guide
NBER also provides Vital Statistical Data: Mortality Multi-cause of death data from 1959, which provides the SAS, SPSS, and Stata codes for reading ASCII files.
Compressed Mortality File (CMF) is comprised of a county-level national mortality file and a corresponding county–level national population file.

The U.S. National Center for Health Statistics' website is a rich source of the national survey data such as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) (response rates and CPS tables), the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), National Nursing Home Survey (NNHS), etc. The NHANES tutorials, a must-visit site, help users to understand and analyze these NHANES complex survey data.

Most of survey data have been linked to mortality data using the National Death Index data: public-use files and more detailed restricted-file accessed through NCHS Research Data Center (RDC).

National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System (NNDSS)
The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is the U.S. on-going telephone health survey system, tracking health conditions and risk behaviors since 1984. You can download datasets here.

The Research Data Centers (RDC) of CDC to allow researchers access to restricted health related data such as linked mortality file, etc.

Human Mortality Data site for multiple countries was created by the UC Berkeley to provide detailed mortality and population data to researchers, students, journalists, policy analysts, and others interested in the history of human longevity.
United States Mortality Database (USMDB) contains original calculations of death rates and life tables for the United States resident population as well as for the 4 US Census regions, the 9 US Census divisions, the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
The Medical Expenditure Panel Survey (MEPS) is a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the United States. MEPS is the most complete source of data on the cost and use of health care and health insurance coverage
IPUMS provides census and survey data from around the world integrated across time and space. IPUMS Health Surveys provide free individual-level survey data for research purposes from two leading sources of self-reported health and health care access information: the NHIS and the MEPS.
Comparability of Cause-of-death Between ICD Revisions

National Heart Lung & Blood Institute (NHLBI) public-use data: The data sets such as CARDIA, ARIC, CHS, Framingham Heart Study from National Heart Lung & Blood Institute (NHLBI) can be get from their new contractor who coordinates access to their data or specimens.
The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) is the longest running longitudinal household survey in the world
The University of Michigan Health and Retirement Study (HRS) is a longitudinal panel study that surveys a representative sample of more than 26,000 Americans over the age of 50 every two years.
The Dynamics of Health, Aging and Body Composition (Health ABC) study for people aged 70 years and older is sponsored by the National Institute on Aging (NIA), the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH). A lot of research papers had been published using the Health ABC data.
Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) includes the largest collection of longitudinal hospital care data in the United States (fee).

Chronic Conditions Data Warehouse provides researchers with Medicare and Medicaid beneficiary, claims, and assessment data linked by beneficiary across the continuum of care (fee).

Analyze US Government Survey Data with R is an on-going project by Anthony Damico. Damico (2009). Transitioning to R (pdf). David Smith (2013).Flowchart: How to learn survey analysis with R

Q-Bank is a collaborative resource for question evaluation. Q-Bank collects question evaluation studies from federal statistical agencies and research organizations.

U.S. General Social Survey (GSS, Wikipedia) contains a standard 'core' of demographic, behavioral, and attitudinal questions, plus topics of special interest. Many of the core questions have remained unchanged since 1972 to facilitate time-trend studies as well as replication of earlier findings. The GSS takes the pulse of America, and is a unique and valuable resource. It has tracked the opinions of Americans over the last four decades. The General Social Survey-National Death Index (GSS-NDI), to be released publicly in October 2011(Codebook, 06/2011) (Peter Muennig, 2011). You can download here.
National Bureau of Economic Research has a Public Use Data Archive site.
Kaggle Datasets: Introducing Kaggle Datasets, 2013 American Community Survey
CDC (2003). International Health Data Reference Guide (pdf)
Finding Data on the Internet by Revojoe
ESRI Demographics: Tapestry Segmentation (fee)
Community Commons provides data, tools, and stories to improve communities and inspire change.
Jackson Heart Study
The Reasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke Study (REGARDS)
Bogalusa Heart Study
Community Level Data

Epidemiology and Beyond