Ford Marvella E, Hill Deanna D, Nerenz David, Hornbrook Mark, Zapka Jane, Meenan Richard, Greene Sarah, Johnson Christine Cole
Resource Center for Minority Aging Research, Henry Ford Health Sciences Center, Detroit, Michigan 48202, USA.
Ethn Dis. 2002 Winter;12(1):135-40.
The Cancer Research Network (CRN) was formed in 1999 with funding from the National Cancer Institute. The CRN represents a collaboration of 10 health plans across the United States, with a combined total of approximately 9 million enrollees. The goal of the CRN is to promote collaborative research, which will ultimately increase the effectiveness of preventive, curative, and supportive interventions for major cancers. Special emphasis is placed upon diverse populations, and racial and ethnic differences in outcomes, costs, and cost effectiveness.
There is increasing awareness in the research literature of the relationship between race and ethnicity and health outcomes. However, the majority of the health maintenance organizations represented in the CRN, similar to other health plans and organizations, do not routinely collect race and ethnicity data on their members. In order to compare data and outcomes across the CRN sites, consensus is needed in the measurement of race and ethnicity.
This review discusses terminology used in the research literature to describe race and ethnicity and the manner in which these constructs have been measured in previous studies.
This review concludes with suggestions for standardized measures of race and ethnicity.
It is hoped that shared conceptualizations of race and ethnicity will lead to improved data quality and precision in measurement.
癌症研究网络（CRN）于1999年在美国国立癌症研究所的资助下成立。CRN代表了美国10个健康计划的合作，总参保人数约为900万。CRN的目标是促进合作研究，最终提高对主要癌症的预防、治疗和支持性干预措施的有效性。特别强调不同人群以及结果、成本和成本效益方面的种族和民族差异。
研究文献中对种族与健康结果之间关系的认识日益提高。然而，CRN中所代表的大多数健康维护组织，与其他健康计划和组织类似，并未常规收集其成员的种族和民族数据。为了比较CRN各站点的数据和结果，需要在种族和民族的测量方面达成共识。
本综述讨论了研究文献中用于描述种族和民族的术语，以及这些概念在以往研究中的测量方式。
本综述最后提出了关于种族和民族标准化测量的建议。
希望对种族和民族的共同概念化将提高数据质量和测量精度。
