Spreadsheet: 003320db-31c2-495a-b70b-651bcded9bd0
Sheet: Sheet1

Overview: Race and Ethnicity Crosswalk Tables – August 2009
As part of the ongoing effort to harmonize NAACCR data items with other national code sets, the Semantic Interoperability Work Group compared the NAACCR race and ethnicity categories and codes to those used by other health-related standard-setting organizations. Specifically, we compared our categories to those used by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Public Health Information Network (PHIN), the National Cancer Institute’s cancer Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) ™, the U.S. Census Bureau, Health Level Seven (HL7), and the CDC National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). At the outset, we had thought that we might want to revise our categories and codes to be consistent with other standards, however at present there is no single national (United States of America) race value set in use in either the healthcare industry or the government. Race and ethnicity are concepts unique to America; Canadians do not employ these concepts.
Our conclusion, particularly in light of the hundreds of codes maintained by the US governmental entities and the private clinical healthcare industry, was that the current NAACCR classification schemes, with a slight modification that will be implemented with NAACCR Volume II, Version 12, best meet the needs of the NAACCR community. (The modification will provide separate codes for Asian Indians and Pakistanis while maintaining an Asian Indian/Pakistani, NOS category.)
We produced a crosswalk file that can be used for recoding, if cancer registries receive race and/or ethnicity data in one of these other coding systems. These tables are included in this file in the respective worksheets and compare the NAACCR codes with the corresponding codes for CDC-NPCR, caBIG, U.S. Census, HL7, and CDC-NCHS, from the perspective of conversion from those codes to the applicable NAACCR codes.  The NAACCR Semantic Data Work Group recognizes that value sets evolve and change over time.  These mapping tables are accurate, to the best of our knowledge, as of the date noted above.
All of these race and ethnicity value sets are compatible with the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) race and ethnicity minimal data requirements (OMB Directive 15 Federal Reporting Race and Ethnicity Standard.). The OMB mandates the use of minimum race and ethnicity concepts. These concepts include five race and two ethnicity categories. The OMB categories for data on race are as follows: American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian, Black or African American, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, and White. The OMB categories for data on ethnicity are as follows: Hispanic or Latino, and Not Hispanic or Latino. OMB does not specify a value or code for these concepts. Additional information about these OMB requirements can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/ombdir15.html.
The CDC-PHIN race and ethnicity code sets are based upon the OMB concepts as well as the more detailed set of race and ethnicity categories maintained by the U.S. Bureau of the Census. The Bureau of Census categories adhere closely to the OMB concepts, with the addition of a sixth race category, Other Race, and more detailed race and ethnicity concepts. There are approximately 900 race concepts included in the Race table and approximately 50 ethnicity concepts in the Ethnicity table.
As noted in the CDC Introduction to Race and Ethnicity Code Set (see [NAME], under Code Sets), “The unique identifier is the permanently assigned numeric code value intended for use in electronic interchange of coded race and ethnicity data.”
The caBIG has adopted the CDC Race and Ethnicity code sets, hence they are grouped together in these NAACCR tables. These code sets as well as additional race concept information can be accessed at the caBIG web-site: https://cabig.nci.nih.gov/workspaces/VCDE/Data_Standards/cde_alpha_race_ethnicity.
In addition, the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel ([NAME]) has adopted the CDC Race and Ethnicity code sets: http://www.hitsp.org/ConstructSet_Details.aspx?&PrefixAlpha=4&PrefixNumeric=80.
Information on the U.S. Census race and ethnicity concepts can be found in Appendices B. Definitions of Subject Characteristics and G. Code Lists of Census 2000 Summary File 2 Technical Documentation/prepared by the U.S. Census Bureau, 2001 (available from http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2000/doc/sf2.pdf).
Information on the HL7 race and ethnicity concepts is available on the HL7 United States web-site (http://www.hl7.org/) in the ‘members only’ section. NAACCR is a HL7 member. This HL7 race table is based upon the OMB race concepts and uses the corresponding CDC-PHIN race values, while the HL7 ethnicity table relies upon the OMB ethnicity concepts but uses HL7 developed values. For detailed race and ethnicity concepts and codes, HL7 relies upon the CDC-PHIN race and ethnicity code sets.
Information on the CDC-NCHS race and ethnicity concepts can be found at: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/dvs/Record_Layout_2006.pdf.
Note:
1. The NAACCR Race data item values consist of two digits, e.g. 01 White, 10 Vietnamese. In order to get the leading zeros into this Excel file the numbers were entered as text (preceded by a ‘ character). This may create some challenges when trying to sort the information.
2. The header rows and the NAACCR columns are locked in the Excel file.
3. The NAACCR Semantic Interoperability Work Group recognizes that this information will change over time and that some of the mapped information may need to be adjusted. Please send comments to [NAME] at [EMAIL].
[NAME], Chair
NAACCR Semantic Data Work Group
[NAME], Chair
NAACCR Interoperability Ad Hoc Committee