TY - JOUR AU - Biro, Suzanne AU - Williamson, Tyler AU - Leggett, Jannet Ann AU - Barber, David AU - Morkem, Rachael AU - Moore, Kieran AU - Belanger, Paul AU - Mosley, Brian AU - Janssen, Ian PY - 2016 DA - 2016/03/11 TI - Utility of linking primary care electronic medical records with Canadian census data to study the determinants of chronic disease: an example based on socioeconomic status and obesity JO - BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making SP - 32 VL - 16 IS - 1 AB - Electronic medical records (EMRs) used in primary care contain a breadth of data that can be used in public health research. Patient data from EMRs could be linked with other data sources, such as a postal code linkage with Census data, to obtain additional information on environmental determinants of health. While promising, successful linkages between primary care EMRs with geographic measures is limited due to ethics review board concerns. This study tested the feasibility of extracting full postal code from primary care EMRs and linking this with area-level measures of the environment to demonstrate how such a linkage could be used to examine the determinants of disease. The association between obesity and area-level deprivation was used as an example to illustrate inequalities of obesity in adults. SN - 1472-6947 UR - https://doi.org/10.1186/s12911-016-0272-9 DO - 10.1186/s12911-016-0272-9 ID - Biro2016 ER -