Nonrandom Missingness in Child Race and Ethnicity Records and the US Federal Data Standards: Pooled Analysis of Community-Based Child Health Studies

These findings demonstrate how the current paradigm of assessing race and ethnicity in the United States may contribute to the erasure and further marginalization of individuals disproportionately enduring the effects of racism. While updated federal race and ethnicity data standards may soon take effect, persistent gaps in demographic and health surveillance will remain. Our data reallocation decision-making process offers a novel and practical framework for harmonizing race and ethnicity data across time, populations, and datasets, emphasizing the relevance and longevity of preexisting datasets and tools. Efforts to build equitable public health surveillance and data systems should expand the survey response options, avoid aggregating diverse populations, and develop new statistical techniques for data analysis.