Session: Using Big Data to Inform Healthcare Utilization, Surveillance, and Prevention Research (Society for Prevention Research 24th Annual Meeting)

The goal of this symposium session is to present a series of innovative approaches that maximize the information contained in Healthcare’s “Big Data”, described as massive volumes of structured and unstructured data flowing through the healthcare system.  “Big Data”, can inform the promotion of etiological and program development research and help scientists and decision makers identify existing and emerging public health and well-being problems. Yet, to maximize the use of “Big Data” in prevention science, we need a strong framework to guide the application and dissemination of adequate statistical methods to extract, link, and analyze Big Data and large datasets. The symposium brings together researchers with a diverse set of backgrounds and interest who have actively been pursuing research in this area.

In the proposed symposium, we will: (1) discuss a methodological framework to link datasets from multiple state-level agencies to provide a unique and comprehensive view of the well-being of women and their children; (2) present a framework of social media analysis to examine the public’s perception of controlled substances to assess population-level factors associated with the epidemic of opioid abuse; (3) apply innovative bioinformatics methods to identify high-users of healthcare systems and potential ineffective utilization patterns to highlight where targeted care interventions could be placed to improve care delivery; and (4) discuss a framework to integrate analytical methods to handle Big Data by identifying challenges and opportunities of using Big Data methods to inform the etiological and surveillance research applied to healthcare utilization and prevention research. 

At the conclusion of the presentations, we plan to leave ample time for discussion and the discussant will facilitate an interactive dialogue between scientists, decision-makers, and stakeholders. It is expected that the diversity of methodological approaches and applications will be of great interest to the SPR Annual Meeting participants.