Skip to content

Clarify NSSP documentation, especially 'HSA' semantics #1634

New issue

Have a question about this project? # for a free GitHub account to open an issue and contact its maintainers and the community.

By clicking “#”, you agree to our terms of service and privacy statement. We’ll occasionally send you account related emails.

Already on GitHub? # to your account

Merged
merged 1 commit into from
Apr 1, 2025
Merged
Changes from all commits
Commits
File filter

Filter by extension

Filter by extension

Conversations
Failed to load comments.
Loading
Jump to
Jump to file
Failed to load files.
Loading
Diff view
Diff view
8 changes: 7 additions & 1 deletion docs/api/covidcast-signals/nssp.md
Original file line number Diff line number Diff line change
Expand Up @@ -43,6 +43,7 @@ As of May 2024, NSSP received data from 78% of US EDs.

The percent visits signals are calculated as a fraction of visits at facilities reporting to NSSP, rather than all facilities in the area.
`county`, `state` and `nation` level data is reported as-is from NSSP, without modification, while `hhs`, `hrr` and `msa` are estimated by Delphi.
State and HSA-level values are calculated and published by NSSP; County level values are not published individually, but are approximations copied from the HSA the county is in (every county in an HSA will have identical values).

### Geographic weighting
As the original data is a percentage and raw case counts are not available, `hrr`,`msa`, and `hhs` values are computed from county-level data using a weighted mean. Each county is assigned a weight equal to its population in the last census (2020). Unreported counties are implicitly treated as having a weight of 0 or a value equal to the group mean.
Expand All @@ -69,6 +70,8 @@ The following states report no data through NSSP at the county level: CA, WA, AK

South Dakota, Missouri, and territories report no data through NSSP at the state level.

The only completely non-reporting state is Missouri.


## Lag and Backfill

Expand All @@ -84,6 +87,9 @@ Counties with `NA` values are as originally reported in the dataset from which t

## Limitations

As noted above, only state and HSA-level values are calculated and published by NSSP; County level values are not published individually, but are approximations copied from the HSA the county is in (every county in an HSA will have identical values).
The HSA (Health Service Area) definitions used are known as ["NCI Modified"](https://seer.cancer.gov/seerstat/variables/countyattribs/hsa.html).

There is substantial missingness at the county level. This tends to impact more rural and lower population locations. See the [missingness section](#missingness) for more information.

Not all counties contain reporting EDs, including in states where NSSP reports state-level data.
Expand All @@ -104,4 +110,4 @@ Some low population counties occasionally report outliers, e.g. 33.33%, 50%, 100
This source is derived from the CDC's [Respiratory Virus Response NSSP Emergency Department Visit Trajectories dataset](https://data.cdc.gov/Public-Health-Surveillance/2023-Respiratory-Virus-Response-NSSP-Emergency-Dep/rdmq-nq56/about_data).
There is another version of the dataset that includes [state data only](https://data.cdc.gov/Public-Health-Surveillance/2023-Respiratory-Virus-Response-NSSP-Emergency-Dep/7mra-9cq9/about_data).

This data was originally published by the CDC, and is made available here as a convenience to the forecasting community under the terms of the original license, which is [U.S. Government Public Domain](https://www.usa.gov/government-copyright).
This data was originally published by the CDC, and is made available here as a convenience to the forecasting community under the terms of the original license, which is [U.S. Government Public Domain](https://www.usa.gov/government-copyright).
Copy link
Collaborator Author

Choose a reason for hiding this comment

The reason will be displayed to describe this comment to others. Learn more.

i think this is just a trailing newline change; this was automatically done by the github browser-based editor that i used.