2014.ISDS.Abstracts.Final.pdf


ISDS Annual Conference Proceedings 2014. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-
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ISDS 2014 Conference Abstracts

Putting Data Linkage into FIRST Gear: Lessons from 
Firefighter Injury Research

Jennifer A. Taylor*1, Michael T. Le Vasseur1, Shannon A. Widman1, Priya Sankar2 and 
Henry J. Costo3

1Department of Environmental & Occupational Health, Drexel University Schoof of Public Health, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 2Office of 
the General Counsel, Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA, USA; 3Fire Department, City of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA

Objective
The purpose of this panel is to describe the process of using data 

to develop firefighter nonfatal injury surveillance systems in the city 
of Philadelphia and the state of Florida through the linkage of data 
from workers’ compensation, inpatient and emergency department 
hospitalizations, human resources, and continuing education/training 
registries.

Introduction
This work builds on a successful demonstration project and 

expands its data linkage capacity to new community partners. 
Presently, a national non-fatal injury reporting system does not exist 
for the Fire Service. In order to tell the story of all injuries within a 
fire department, state, or on a national scale, we must utilize data 
that are available from multiple sources that do not naturally talk to 
each other. In this panel, we will describe the purpose of the project, 
its goals, and the success of its model to public health surveillance.

Description
We will engage the audience through a panel presentation 

comprised of members of our team who were critical to each step 
in the process, from stakeholder engagement to data acquisition and 
linkage. We will describe, in a stepwise process, how we effectuated 
data agreements, educated and heard from stakeholders, and ultimately 
analyzed the resulting data to uncover conclusions regarding injuries 
in the Fire Service. Panelists include a legal expert, a statistician, 
an industry partner, and project staff. The panel will begin with the 
discussion of the various stakeholders necessary (including leadership 
from national organizations) to garner agreements on the importance 
and benefits of data linkage. We will discuss the legal process and 
implications of establishing data sharing agreements and contractual 
relationships, especially around the access to personally identifiable 
health information (PHI). We will explore issues such as access to 
personal identifiers, and how working with stakeholders to examine 
policy facilitators and barriers to accessing data, in order to perform 
data linkage between data sets that do not regularly talk to each other, 
is critical for driving the process forward. We will also discuss the 
utility of the resultant master database to the community partners, and 
how we elicit “givebacks” to the data stewards so that they understand 
the utility and relevance of the databases created. We will then move 
on to show how the PHI data linkage was conducted using direct and 
probabilistic data linkage methods. We will describe our computing 
environment, especially as it pertains to data security and integrity. 
We will conclude with a description of the analyses we were able 
to undertake because we successfully linked data sets that had not 
previously talked to one another. We will also integrate one of our 
community stakeholders to share his perspective on the utility of the 
resultant data for his prevention priorities for the road ahead.

Audience Engagement
Methods for cultivating relationships with target communities and 

stakeholders will be discussed by project staff members (Jennifer 
Taylor/Shannon Widman).

The legal process, hurdles, and implications, regarding effectuating 
data sharing agreements with target sites, will be presented by a legal 
expert (Priya Sankar).

Data linkage, requirements and methods, will be explored by an 
experienced statistician (Michael LeVasseur).

The utility and usefulness of the final product resulting from the 
data linkage will be presented by one of our project’s stakeholders, a 
Fire Service community member (Henry Costo).

Keywords
data linkage; surveillance; fire service

*Jennifer A. Taylor

E-mail: jat65@drexel.edu    

Online Journal of Public Health Informatics * ISSN 1947-2579 * http://ojphi.org * (1):e6, 201