Opportunities and Challenges in Public Health Data Collection in Southern Asia: Examples from Western India and Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Amruta Nori-Sarma, Anobha Gurung, Gulrez Shah Azhar, Ajit Rajiva, Dileep Mavalankar, Perry Sheffield and Michelle L. Bell
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Amruta Nori-Sarma: School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA
Anobha Gurung: Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712, USA
Gulrez Shah Azhar: Pardee RAND Graduate School, Santa Monica, CA 90401, USA
Ajit Rajiva: School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA
Dileep Mavalankar: Public Health Foundation of India, Indian Institute of Public Health—Gandhinagar, Gandhinagar, Gujarat 382042, India
Perry Sheffield: Department of Environmental Medicine and Public Health and Department of Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY 10029, USA
Michelle L. Bell: School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT 06511, USA

Sustainability, 2017, vol. 9, issue 7, 1-9

Abstract: Small-scale local data resources may serve to provide a highly resolved estimate of health effects, which can be spatially heterogeneous in highly populated urban centers in developing countries. We aim to highlight the challenges and opportunities of health data registries in a developing world context. In western India, government-collected daily mortality registry data were obtained from five cities, along with daily hospital admissions data from three government hospitals in Ahmedabad. In Nepal, individual-level data on hospital admissions were collected from six major hospitals in Kathmandu Valley. Our process illustrates many challenges for researchers, governments, and record keepers inherent to data collection in developing countries: creating and maintaining a centralized record-keeping system; standardizing the data collected; obtaining data from some local agencies; assuring data completeness and availability of back-ups to the datasets; as well as translating, cleaning, and comparing data within and across localities. We suggest that these “small-data” resources may better serve the analysis of health outcomes than exposure-response functions extrapolated from data collected in other areas of the world.

Keywords: capacity building; data collection; hospital admissions; India; mortality; public health; Nepal; South Asia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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