Americans with disabilities worried over plan to slash national health survey

The cost-saving change is part of an ongoing effort to slim down the 69-year-old National Health Interview Survey

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Some Americans with disabilities could be wrongly classified under plans to dramatically shrink the federal government's most influential health survey, advocates and researchers have warned.

The survey in question is the National Health Interview Survey, which is 69 years old and has for years been suffering from declining response rates. The cost-saving change is part of an ongoing effort to slim it down and at least half the survey questions could be axed.

Questions that have been proposed for removal deal with memory, fatigue, arthritis, difficulty walking and climbing stairs, as well as others about the use of hearing aids, canes, wheelchairs and scooters.

Officials are still determining exactly how much cutting will take place, and the cuts are being ironed out. They predict the whittling won't be as severe as what's been suggested in earlier proposals.

Currently, the survey has 490 health questions for adults. U.S. officials expect that the 2028 questionnaire will have about 200 to 225 questions, said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Stephen Blumberg, who oversees the survey.

U.S. Census Bureau workers conduct the survey every year on behalf of the CDC. It's a $40 million annual project, and around 30,000 households answer the questions each year.

Their answers have shaped the public's understanding of topics including how common chronic fatigue syndrome is, how many people get X-rays, what proportion of U.S. children suffer seizures, and how many Americans have health insurance.

Fewer people are interested in participating in such surveys. The National Health Interview Survey is particularly daunting, as it can take an hour or more and has traditionally involved an in-person interviewer asking the questions.

“People are busy. They're more protective of their privacy, and some don't trust the government to protect their data and use it only for statistical purposes,” he said. “Fewer people see sharing information with the government as their civic duty.”

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the White House Office of Management and Budget were behind dramatic staff reductions, research funding overhauls and other federal health agency changes under the current Trump administration. But neither ordered this redesign, Blumberg said.