Are there training programs, educational resources, webinars/seminars, etc. to help users get familiar with the data?

HHS is working diligently to make the troves of data available at HHS much more accessible to the public and putting it in the hands of innovators across the country who have developed novel and powerful applications that have served millions of Americans.

In addition to creating briefs and fact sheets that highlight the data available at their respective agencies, many data owners are conducting several workshops per year that involves specific data set training and hands-on use of the public use data files. Agency data leads are also making presentations at national scientific and public meetings and symposiums focused on increasing familiarity with publically available data for research and practice. To supplement these sessions, online training systems and tutorial programs are available for new sites that come into the data registries. Some agencies are even developing wiki pages dedicated to each data set documenting the intended use cases for the data. These pages also provide additional metadata where it is possible to enhance the value of the data sets for clinically meaningful research.

To publicize HHS data and improve health data transparency, community outreach events have been held all over the country. These include health data “boot camps” where experts are present to explain data and technology developers and community leaders interact to invent new uses of data for important challenges in their health community. Additionally, more than 20 health data developer challenges have been held across the country engaging technology developers from small and large companies to work together on creating new applications. HHS has also promoted the use of code-a-thons – activities that bring together computer technologists who form teams to work on new applications in a common setting where they can interact with data experts.