This award will support the establishment of the Wasatch Front Research Data Center (WFRDC), which will be based at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. The WFRDC will provide social and medical scientists a cost-effective, secure research facility where they will have greater access to restricted statistical data collected by the federal government. The organizations that will support and benefit from the WFRDC include the University of Utah, Utah State University, Brigham Young University, Huntsman Cancer Institute (a National Cancer Institute Comprehensive Cancer Center), departments within the Utah state government, and the University of Utah Health Sciences Center. The WFRDC will facilitate collaborations between scientists in Utah and the Intermountain region. It will allow researchers to explore novel questions in areas such as health, medical care, work force trends, population dynamics, and environmental issues. The insights created from these investigations will advance scientific knowledge and provide benefits to residents in the Intermountain West, local government agencies, and the federal statistical system. The long-term effects of the WFRDC will include enhanced educational and employment development, collaborations between institutions and disciplines, and better informed government agencies. Researchers and students receiving training through the WFRDC will promote workforce development and provide opportunities for students to gain expertise in data science and other novel methods. This will create a large pool of technically trained individuals who will make contributions to the academic, public, and private sectors.
The WFRDC will provide more cost-effective access to restricted data that will be of value to scientists from fields that include demography, sociology, economics, human development, geography, public health, and epidemiology. The WFRDC plans to link the data contained within the Utah Population Database (UPDB) to other federal statistical records. The UPDB holds one of the largest research databases in the world linking genealogies with medical records. WFRDC scientists will address fundamental questions about the role of early life factors (socioeconomic, geographic, biomedical) and their influence on health later in life as well as socioeconomic differentials in adult health. Using data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality along with population estimates derived from the decennial census and the American Community Survey, researchers will address questions related to the interaction between the economy and the health of its members. Geographers and spatial scientists will use restricted U.S. Census data that provide counts of small geographic areas to study social vulnerability to hazards such as air pollution and its role in promoting health disparities. WFRDC scientists also will examine how economic forces affect individual and family outcomes and social and economic mobility using various datasets from the U.S. Census Bureau.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
