Welch Medical Library Guides: Data Resources for Health & Medical Research: Overview

This guide is designed to help you find both statistics and datasets. Some of the resources provided are limited to the Johns Hopkins domain and will require you to log in with your JHED ID and password in order to use them; however, many data sources that are available from government agencies, think tanks, non-profits, etc. are open access. This guide is not exhaustive, but designed to provide you with a solid starting point on possible data sources for health and medical research.

A dataset is data that are presented in a manipulable format for analysis. The dataset could be in a table, text file, set of images, and spread across multiple files. Raw data are often synonymous with datasets though "raw" typically signifies that substantial clean-up may need to be done prior to analysis. Some datasets do come readily available in analytic formats or formats easily migrated into analytic tools such as R, Stata, Tableau, and others.

Statistics are generated from data. They are presented in an aggregate form already, such as a a table of frequencies, means, rates, or visualized as a chart or graph. Statistics are readily available pieces of information, from which a conclusion may be drawn. Below is a graph from the Big Cities Health Coalition on children's blood lead levels in 2013.

Data Resources @ JH

Bloomberg School of Public Health Biostatistics Center
The Johns Hopkins Biostatistics Center provides consulting on biostatistical issues related to the effective collection and interpretation of health information.
Bloomberg School of Public Health Institutional Review Board
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health is committed to protecting the rights and welfare of all individuals who participate as subjects in research. The School has two on-site Institutional Review Boards (IRB X and IRB FC) and an external IRB (the Western IRB) that reviews certain studies on our behalf. It is the responsibility of faculty and students to ensure that formal IRB approval is obtained before initiating contact with human subjects in any research project.
Data Management Services @ JH
Effective data management can increase the pace of the research process, contribute to the soundness of research results, and meet funding agency requirements by making research data easy to share.
Data Management Services @ JH: Training
Join DMP for one of their upcoming sessions either in-person, online and by request.
Data Science Specialization on Coursera from JH SPH
This Specialization covers the concepts and tools you'll need throughout the entire data science pipeline, from asking the right kinds of questions to making inferences and publishing results. In the final Capstone Project, you’ll apply the skills learned by building a data product using real-world data. At completion, students will have a portfolio demonstrating their mastery of the material.
Johns Hopkins Medicine Biostatistics, Epidemiology and Data Management (BEAD)
To provide research support services that promote, strengthen and expand the research of Johns Hopkins University faculty so that we remain one of the top interdisciplinary research institutions. The research support services offered by the CCHR BEAD Core enable more competitive grant applications, transforms data into scholarly products, and streamlines complex data gathering.
Johns Hopkins Medicine Data Trust Organization (Intranet)
The Data Trust Council is responsible for overall governance of patient and member-related data, including development of policies to ensure the quality, accessibility and use of data for appropriate purposes.
Johns Hopkins Medicine Institutional Review Board
The Johns Hopkins Medicine Institutional Review Boards (JHM IRBs) are responsible for protecting the rights and welfare of the human subjects of research conducted by faculty and staff at the Institutions. The JHM IRBs review all human subjects research projects conducted by Hopkins faculty and staff. To fulfill the agreement underlying the assurances, and to satisfy institutional policy, all faculty and staff at the Institutions must submit for JHM IRB review any human subject research project, regardless of funding source (or lack thereof) and/or location at which the research will be conducted.