Could DAWN data be used to identify people who come to emergency rooms die because of drug use?
A. No. Federal laws prohibit release of information that would identify an individual in DAWN data. DAWN does not collect any direct identifiers for individual patients or decedents. That is, we do not collect names, medical record numbers, addresses, dates of birth, or social security numbers. To further protect individuals from the chance of being identified based on other data items, we do not provide raw data files for public use; do not publish data for a specific hospital; publish only aggregated metropolitan area or national data; and suppress table cells (i.e., delete the data) when there are so few cases that an individual might be identified from available information. Detailed information can be found under the Privacy and Confidentiality section of this website.
