Impacts of census differential privacy for small-area disease mapping to monitor health inequities.

ABSTRACT: The U.S. Census Bureau will implement a modernized privacy-preserving disclosure avoidance system (DAS), which includes application of differential privacy, on publicly released 2020 census data. There are concerns that the DAS may bias small-area and demographically stratified population counts, which play a critical role in public health research, serving as denominators in estimation of disease/mortality rates. Using three DAS demonstration products, we quantify errors attributable to reliance on DAS-protected denominators in standard small-area disease mapping models for characterizing health inequities. We conduct simulation studies and real data analyses of inequities in premature mortality at the census tract level in Massachusetts and Georgia. Results show that overall patterns of

SUBMITTER: Li Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10438951 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature