Welch Medical Library Guides: Nursing Students: Health Statistics for Nursing

About Health Statistics

As a nurse, you will be called upon to use statistics in a variety of ways: to enhance patient care, support evidence-based nursing practice and to compare options for nursing practice. While much of the data you may use for these purposes will come from internal sources, finding external sources of statistics can be challenging. This guide, Data Resources for Health & Medical Research, provides data on regional, national, and international health statistics.

Some Health Statistics for Nursing

Start here for some state, local, and national sources for statistics

Baltimore City Health Department
The Baltimore City Health Department has a wealth of statistical information about the state of Baltimoreans' health.
Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future
The Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future is an excellent place to find information on the availability, or lack thereof, of healthy food options for Baltimore's residents.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality: State Snapshots
The State Snapshots provide graphical representations of State-specific health care quality information, including strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement. The goal is to help State officials and their public- and private-sector partners better understand health care quality and disparities in their State. State-level information used to create the State Snapshots is based on data collected for the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR).
Kaiser Family Foundation: State Health Facts
A Kaiser Family Foundation site that provides statistics on more than 500 health topics for each state.
Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is a first top for searching health-related information pertaining to Maryland.
CDC WONDER
CDC Wide-ranging ONline Data for Epidemiologic Research
(CDC WONDER) utilizes a rich ad-hoc query system for the analysis of public health data. Scoll down to find "Enviornmental Healt" which list majors resources on the environmental heath topic. A must check out list if you're interested in enviormental health.
DATA.GOV
Under the terms of the 2013 Federal Open Data Policy, newly-generated government data is required to be made available in open, machine-readable formats, while continuing to ensure privacy and security. DATA.GOV is primarily a federal open government data site. However, state, local, and tribal governments can also syndicate metadata describing their open data resources on DATA.GOV for greater discoverability. DATA.GOV does not host data directly, but rather aggregates metadata about open data resources in one centralized location. Once an open data source meets the necessary format and metadata requirements, the DATA.GOV team can pull directly from it as a Harvest Source, synchronizing that source’s metadata on DATA.GOV as often as every 24 hours.
National Center for Health Statistics: Fast Stats
The FastStats site provides quick access to statistics on topics of public health importance and is organized alphabetically. Links are provided to publications that include the statistics presented, to sources of more data, and to related web pages.