Since 1957, the National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), has been the primary source of information for monitoring health and health care use of the U.S. population at the national level. The passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) in 2010 generated new needs for data to monitor its implementation and evaluate its effectiveness. In response, the NCHS has taken steps to enhance the content of the NHIS in several key areas and positioned the NHIS as a source of population health information at the national and state levels. This paper reviews recent changes to the NHIS that support enhanced health reform monitoring, including new questions and response categories, sampling design changes to improve state-level analysis, and enhanced dissemination activities. We conclude with a discussion about the importance of the NHIS, the continued need for state-level analysis, and suggestions for future consideration.

Data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) are rarely analyzed in a way that takes advantage of the CPS’s longitudinal design. This is mainly because of the technical difficulties associated with linking CPS files across months. In this paper, we describe the method we are using to create unique identifiers for all CPS person and household records from 1989 onward. These identifiers—available along with CPS basic and supplemental data as part of the on-line Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS)—make it dramatically easier to use CPS data for longitudinal research across any number of substantive domains. To facilitate the use of these new longitudinal IPUMS-CPS data, we also outline seven different ways that researchers may choose to link CPS person records across months, and we describe the sample sizes and sample retention rates associated with these seven designs. Finally, we discuss a number of unique methodological challenges that researchers will confront when analyzing data from linked CPS files.

Context Sexually experienced women are at risk of cervical cancer, one of the most common female reproductive cancers. Nearly 20% of U.S. women aged 18–64 have a disability, and disability is associated with health care access; however, the relationship between disability and Pap smear receipt remains underexplored. Methods Data on 20,907 women aged 21–64 from the 2000 and 2005 National Health Interview Surveys were used to investigate the relationship between disability and cervical cancer screening. Logistic regression analyses were conducted to assess the association between disability and both women's receipt of a Pap smear and their receipt of a doctor's recommendation for a Pap smear in the past year. Results Having a disability was negatively associated with Pap smear receipt (odds ratio, 0.6). Compared with women with no disabilities, those with mobility limitations and those with other types of limitations had reduced odds of having received a Pap smear (0.5–0.7). Disability was positively associated with having received a recommendation for a Pap smear (1.2); however, among women who had received a recommendation, those with disabilities had reduced odds of having received a Pap smear (0.5). Among women who had not received a Pap smear, 31% of those with disabilities and 13% of others cited cost or lack of insurance as the primary reason. Conclusions The negative relationship between Pap smear receipt and multiple types of disability suggests barriers beyond the human-made physical features of the environment. Efforts to reduce inequalities in reproductive health care access should consider the needs of women with disabilities.

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Women immigrating to the United States from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) were expected to incorporate seamlessly into the US labor force because of their strong educational and professional backgrounds. Using 2000 Census data, we find that FSU women were less successful than both FSU men and other non-Hispanic white female immigrants. After controlling for other factors, FSU women were more likely to rely on public assistance and less likely to be employed. If employed, they worked in less prestigious occupations and earned much less. These findings draw attention to the particular difficulties of incorporation of this wave of relatively advantaged immigrants.