Careful: An administrative child welfare and electronic health records linked dataset

Sarah J Beal; Katie Nause; Robert T Ammerman; Eric S Hall; Constance A Mara; Mary V Greiner

doi:10.1016/j.dib.2022.108507

Careful: An administrative child welfare and electronic health records linked dataset

Data Brief. 2022 Aug 2:44:108507. doi: 10.1016/j.dib.2022.108507. eCollection 2022 Oct.

Authors

Sarah J Beal^{1

2}, Katie Nause², Robert T Ammerman^{1

2}, Eric S Hall³, Constance A Mara^{1

2}, Mary V Greiner^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, 3333 Burnet Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45229-3036 USA.
² Division of Behavioral Medicine and Clinical Psychology, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, 3333 Burnet Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45229-3036 USA.
³ Department of Research Informatics and Innovation, Geisinger Health Systems, 100 North Academy Ave., Danville, PA 17822 USA.
⁴ Division of General and Community Pediatrics, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, 3333 Burnet Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45229-3036 USA.

Abstract

Between 2012 and 2017, N = 2814 youth between the ages of 4 and 20 were in child protective services (CPS) custody in Hamilton County, Ohio, and placed in out-of-home care. Child welfare administrative records were extracted and linked to electronic health records for all encounters at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, with n = 2787 (99.1%) of records successfully linked prior to de-identifying the data for research purposes. Child welfare administrative data fields in the dataset include demographics, dates of entry into and exit from protective custody and out-of-home care, reasons for entry into custody, dates of placement changes, reasons for placement changes, and types of placement (e.g., foster home, kinship home, group home, residential treatment, independent living). Electronic health records (EHR) data fields include demographics, all inpatient and outpatient encounters with medications, diagnoses, screening results, laboratory test results, flowsheet data, and problem list entries. Data have been coded to capture broader categories of health needs and encounter details, medications, and other health concerns. Due to the high representation of children in CPS custody and out-of-home care who are also represented in the EHR data, this dataset provides a comprehensive view of the medical needs and health concerns for school-aged children in CPS custody in an entire county. As a result, these data can be useful for understanding the emergence of global and specific health concerns, frequency of healthcare use, and placement stability for all youth in CPS custody in this community, accounting for variation due to other health and child welfare factors. These data are likely generalizable to other mid-sized urban communities where academic medical centers provide healthcare for children in CPS custody. De-identified data may be made available to other researchers with approved data transfer agreements between academic institutions in place.

Keywords: Child protective services; Data linking; Foster care; Health services research; Kinship care; Out-of-home care.

Abstract

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