Social Contexts of Administrative Data About Substance Use Disorder
Administrative data are the exhaust and fuel driving learning health systems. Especially noteworthy for health researchers is the routine collection of diagnostic and health information, often in the form of International Classification of Diseases codes. To strengthen research, health care, and policy decisions grounded in the use of health administrative data, it is critical that data users continuously reflect on data quality. Investigating the human and material contexts of data production, including research with people who participate in “data work,” can help account for power relations, interests and values inscribed into datasets, and the fitness of administrative data for secondary use. Such critical reflection is particularly important when considering the data collected about populations and groups that experience structural inequities, social exclusion, and subjugation.
Drawing on population-based data about substance use disorder (SUD) in British Columbia, this qualitative study with health information professionals and physicians explores the web of social and institutional relations that shape and constrain the production of administrative data in hospital settings. In addition to deepening our understanding of the “measurement context” in which SUDs are classified and recorded in administrative data, this research also aims to identify opportunities to improve the quality and interpretability of routinely collected data about SUD.
About the Speaker:
Jeffrey Morgan is a doctoral candidate in the School of Population and Public Health at the University of British Columbia and BC Centre on Substance Use. His research explores how values, biases, and social contexts are encoded in health administrative data about substance use, and the ethical and epistemological implications for public health, health services, and policy research. Jeffrey has a passion for community-based participatory research, with an interest in developing and sharing innovative approaches to research capacity building and meaningfully involving communities at every step of the research process.