From the Director of the National Center for Health Statistics

Our health care system is changing, perhaps more rapidly than ever before. Science is changing the ways we prevent, detect, and treat disease. Indeed, genetics is revolutionizing our understanding of the very nature of disease. The changing relationships between providers, patients, and health care financing are influencing policy and research. And new communication and computer technology is fundamentally changing health information and how we learn about, interact with, and conduct research in health.

Information is at the core of our mission at the National Center for Health Statistics. At NCHS we collect, analyze, and disseminate information on the health of the American people, on the health system, and on many aspects of our families and our lives. The information we develop is vital to both the public and private sectors and for setting health policy.

Our most valuable resource at NCHS is our staff. It is they and their predecessors who are responsible for a proud forty-year history of advancing health statistics. Several of our most senior staff have retired or will soon retire, creating a number of leadership openings. These positions are challenging - challenging in terms of their importance to setting health policy, to advancing the statistical science of health and survey statistics, and to pushing the state-of-the-art in collecting and disseminating information. I should add that we also have opportunities for career development at all other levels in our organization as well as special research and shared positions between governments and universities. We are looking for persons who have the vision to meet the needs of the health care system of the next century.

I encourage you to consider joining us at the National Center as we work to meet the challenges of this new era in health care and health research. I am confident it will be rewarding for you and for the Nation.

Edward J. Sondik, Ph.D.