DOD COMPREHENSIVE CLINICAL EVALUATION PROGRAM DATABASE AVAILABLE FOR INDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION
Today the Department of Defense announced that the data set
for the Comprehensive Clinical Evaluation Program is available to
qualified scientific researchers. Established in 1994 by DoD
Health Affairs, the CCEP was instituted to provide a standardized
method of assessing health concerns of active duty Persian Gulf
War veterans and their families. In addition to providing
medical care, the program is also designed to develop an
understanding of the nature of their symptoms.
The DoD CCEP data set contains health information on those
individuals who volunteered to participate and were eligible for
DoD health benefits. The data set is in a database format that
facilitates identifying trends or patterns of symptoms/diagnoses
among participants. The characteristics of the data set include:
No personal identifiers. All privacy act data has been
removed from the database to ensure the privacy of all
participants
Information on more than 22,000 self-selected individuals
who have completed their evaluations
Nearly 4.9 million data elements
Information concerning demographics, self-reported
exposures, self-reported symptoms, and diagnostic codes
Computer Requirements: at least 20MB of available hard
drive; PKUNZIP Program; and a database that reads .DBF
files
A registration and review process is required before the
CCEP data set can be released to a researcher. Researchers who
wish to request an application package for the CCEP database
should contact the Defense Technical Information Center at (703)
767-8271. The price of the database is $25. DTIC will provide
the appropriate request form. In addition to the form,
investigators are strongly encouraged to submit an Institutional
Review Board approved, scientific protocol. Any properly
constituted IRB will suffice. A properly constituted IRB has the
ability to review, comment, approve, require modifications (in
order to obtain approval), and disapprove research protocols.
Questions concerning the CCEP database may be addressed to the
Deployment Surveillance Team at (703) 681-7812/13.
