The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Office of Minority Health (CMS OMH) would like to share this message from the Chief Statistician of the United States (CSOTUS) within the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) about an important step in advancing the collection of race and ethnicity data across Federal agencies.
The Office of the CSOUTUS took a key step forward in its formal process to revise OMB’s statistical standards for collecting and reporting race and ethnicity data across Federal agencies by releasing a set of initial proposals in a Federal Register Notice. Comments are open now until April 12, 2023.
In 2022, the Chief Statistician of the United States (CSOTUS) within the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) convened the Federal Interagency Technical Working Group on Race and Ethnicity Standards (Working Group) to review and develop recommendations for revising OMB’s 1997 Statistical Policy Directive No. 15: Standards for Maintaining, Collecting, and Presenting Federal Data on Race and Ethnicity (SPD 15). Input from stakeholders and the public will be critical in guiding the Working Group as it continues to refine and finalize its recommendations.
The proposals are open for anyone to provide thoughts and reactions, including how they may affect different communities, by April 12, 2023 at Regulations.gov, where you can submit comments by searching for “OMB-2023-0001.” If you would like more information, the Working Group also has a new public website at: spd15revision.gov where you can learn more about the initial revision proposals and how the public can get involved, or read a recent blog post from the White House announcing the news.
Increasing the collection of standardized demographic data across health care systems is an important step towards health equity. To learn more about the CMS efforts on data collection, review The Path Forward: Improving Data to Advance Health Equity Solutions.
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