CDC National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey

The CDC's National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) provides health metrics on a large and representative sample of the United States population from 1999 to 2012, including physiological and clinical parameters (e.g., serum cholesterol, glucose), personal environmental biomarkers (e.g., blood mercury and infectious agents), physiological characteristics (e.g., head circumference), and self-reported behaviors (e.g., diet, physical activity). However, these valuable data collections have been difficult to download, query, analyze, and integrate with other datasets. 

The PIC-SURE team has merged these collections from 255 separate files into a single unified and universally accessible data file that encompasses 1,191 variables on 41,474 individuals. The file can be accessed through two methods: 

The i2b2/tranSMART User Interface Way - A user-friendly web app called the Dataset Explorer 

https://nhanes.hms.harvard.edu

10 minute demo video: https://vimeo.com/182576739

The PIC-SURE RESTful API way - an application programming interface enabling consumption by external tools such as R or Python

API example 1: https://pic-sure.org/products/nhanes-unified-dataset/pic-sure-restful-api-way

API example 2: http://bd2k-picsure.hms.harvard.edu/example-01.html

See also: Open Data