The Behavioral Medicine Report

I recently discovered a very interesting and particularly valuable website, at least for researchers, called data.gov. The U.S. government set up Data.gov through the Open Government Initiative to publicly publish Executive Branch datasets. Researchers can download raw data or use provided tools to aid in statistical analyses. Datasets from a wide range of federal agencies have been collected. Of interest to our readers, it appears that “health and nutrition” datasets will be available soon as as evidenced by its listing in their “categories;” however, there is very little data at the present time. Healthcare researchers should definitely keep an eye on this though as this might turn out to be a fantastic resource for free public health data.

The Data.gov websites describes their purpose as:

“The purpose of Data.gov is to increase public access to high value, machine readable datasets generated by the Executive Branch of the Federal Government. Although the initial launch of Data.gov provides a limited portion of the rich variety of Federal datasets presently available, we invite you to actively participate in shaping the future of Data.gov by suggesting additional datasets and site enhancements to provide seamless access and use of your Federal data. Visit today with us, but come back often. With your help, Data.gov will continue to grow and change in the weeks, months, and years ahead.”

Enjoy.

CFisher

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