FOCUS
Sarah’s goal is to ensure that the data used to inform and develop health policy represents the lived experiences of impacted communities. Specifically, she studies data quality in electronic health records (EHRs), which are frequently used as observational data sets in clinical and public health research. EHR data, which encodes clinical workflows and institutional practices, is frequently subject to missingness, inconsistencies, inaccuracy, or bias. These data quality issues have serious implications for subsequent research and policy efforts, particularly in the realm of health equity work. Sarah’s research therefore has a two-fold focus: 1) identifying the structural factors that impact EHR data quality, and 2) examining how data quality impacts downstream research and health information technology interventions that target historically disenfranchised populations.
MORE ABOUT SARAH
Sarah is the daughter of Egyptian immigrants to the United States. As an Arab American, she understands how poor data quality poses a barrier to identifying and addressing health inequities. Sarah believes that research can be a tool to achieve social justice, and hopes to apply her interdisciplinary background to achieving a Culture of Health.
DISSERTATION GRANT AWARDEE — SUMMER 2023
A Critical Analysis of Organizational Practices Underlying Interoperability of Race and Ethnicity Data
Health care organizations (HCOs) are federally mandated to collect patient race and ethnicity in their electronic health records (EHRs) for the purpose of improving population health and addressing health disparities. Given increasing concerns over data quality, there are calls to improve standardization of racial and ethnic categories and promote interoperable exchange of race and ethnicity data. By conceptualizing interoperability as a sociomaterial organizational practice, this dissertation examines how the complex and highly contextual work underlying interoperability of race and ethnicity data could further complicate data quality.
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