An student is looking for any recent aggregated data on hysterectomies in Quebec broken down by ethnicity or visible minority status. We have been able to find many sources for Quebec stats, but never broken down by ethnicity. Using Nesstar we were able to find variables in the Canadian Community Health Survey 2011-12 for hysterectomies (Variable MAM_038) and visible minority status, but provincial data seems only to be available for Alberta, Ontario and Newfoundland. All other provinces show 0 for variable MAM_038, so I checked the documentation and Appendix B confirmed that Quebec (and most other provinces) had opted out of the Mammography (MAM) questions (and yes, the hysterectomy variable is that category).
I also checked the Institut de la Statistique du Québec and Ministère de la Santé et des Services Sociaux but could not get a breakdown by ethnicity.
Can someone think of another data source?
Answer
The single year 2012 CCHS cycle should have that variable as mammography was a theme for just that year. L'Institut de la Statistique du Québec being one of our partners should have the single year 2012 for CCHS. When there is a theme, data is collected from all provinces.
Therefore, any provinces, should have data on that theme for that year regardless if they had opted out the prior year. Whoever is looking to get the data where a province had opted out in a prior year (in this example 2011 for Quebec), has to look on the single year release. In this case the person would have to look at the single year data file for CCHS 2012.
If someone tries to run it on the 2011-12 PUMF then they will only get results for the provinces that had opted in for 2011 even though mammography was a theme for 2012. The results for Canada are already low that trying to cross it by provinces and Ethnicity could prove to be a challenge in some areas.
Dataset: Canadian Community Health Survey, 2012: Annual Component
2012: Annual Component
Variable MAM_038: Had a hysterectomy
