Race and Ehthnicity - UDS values vs OMB/Detail Values

[anthonygalba]

I asked this question before on a BPHC ticket, but I'm still not sure how this is supposed to work. Here's my previous question and response: Question: "Hi, I have some questions about how exactly we should be constructing the extensions for race and ethnicity for UDS+.

Most of our customers are documenting race and ethnicity only at the level of detail required by the UDS manual. For example, they may document a patient's race as 'Black/African American', but not specifically if they are 'Black', or 'African American'. For most of these, the OMB race value is obvious, but the IG says the detailed race value is required too, however those are more detailed than the combined 'Black/African American' value from the UDS manual. What exactly should we be sending as the detailed race in cases like these? Or does it even matter what we send for detailed race if the OMB Race category matches the UDS manual?

Here's all of the values I'm not certain how to handle:

UDS Race: 'Black/African American' OMB Race: 'Black or African American' Detailed Race: There are separate options for 'Black' and 'African American', but not a combined one.

UDS Race: 'American Indian/Alaska Native' OMB Race: 'American Indian or Alaska Native' Detail Race: There are separate options for 'American Indian' and 'Alaska Native', as well as many more detailed races that you could categorize as an American Indian or Alaska Native

UDS Race: 'White' OMB Race: 'White' Detail Race: There is no generic 'White' value here

UDS Race: 'Other Asian' OMB Race: 'Asian' Detail Race: There is no generic 'Other Asian' value here. Should we just send the 'Other' null flavor?

UDS Ethnicity: 'Not Hispanic, Latino/a, or Spanish Origin' OMB Ethnicity: 'Not Hispanic' Detail Ethnicity: Every detailed ethnicity code is a type of Hispanic ethnicity. What do we send for non-Hispanic ethnicities here?

UDS Ethnicity: 'Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano/a' OMC Ethnicity; 'Hispanic' Detail Ethnicity: 'Mexican', 'Mexican American', and 'Chicano' are all separate options. What do we send when we know they fall into the UDS ethnicity or 'Mexican, Mexican American, Chicano/a', but we don't specifically know if they are Mexican vs Chicano. for example?

UDS Ethnicity: 'Another Hispanic, Latino/a, or Spanish Origin' OMB Ethnicity: 'Hispanic' Detail Ethnicity: There is no generic 'Other Hispanic' option here. Should we just send the 'Other' null flavor?"

BPHC response: "Thank you for your interest in the Uniform Data System (UDS) Modernization Initiative and UDS patient-level submission (UDS+). The short answer is that you will have determine which criteria to follow but we are working on a more detailed response and will send it shortly. If you have additional questions on this topic, please reply to this message and reference ticket number 01551140."

I never got a response after that. It would be very helpful if HRSA could provide which detail codes map to which UDS Manual race and ethnicities so we as a vendor do not have to guess that. Or perhaps you should limit the details codes that are possible to send as part of the IG so that you explicitly say which race and ethnicity values are expected, instead of allowing any of the 900 possible codes. Alternatively, if HRSA does accept all 900 of the detail codes, then you'd have to have a crosswalk from those details codes to the UDS manual values in order for you to interpret UDS+ data. If that's the case, would you be able to publish whatever you use?

[cooperthompson]

Dragon was suggesting that they might update the ethnicity extension to profile it to use a UDS+ value set which would be a combination of the US Core (OMB) codes and the UDS codes.

[nisk90]

I have the same query for Race and Ethnicities. Do we have any update on this. I see the latest IG 1.0.2 also having the same structure for Ethnicities and Race as 1.0.1.

[ss-sagar]

Has this issue been addressed ? I would suggest to have a default value if the detailed race and ethnicity is not present. Another suggestion would be to make the detail race and ethnicity as optional from being required currently.

[nisk90]

@nbashyam can you help with this issue.

[nisk90]

@nbashyam following up on this ticket.