Good morning,

There are several options that I would say you could examine.  The
first option, and the one I would most strongly suggest, would be to
to identify a topic and data set(s) that are particularly amenable to
your study of interest, and then contact one or more researchers in
the area that have the type of data you are interested in.  I have
found that people who collect data are often unable to analyze it as
much as they like, and are often very happy to have someone with the
appropriate skills work with their data.  You might have to keep them
updated on your work, and you may want to negotiate authorship on any
papers and/or presentations, but it can begin collaboration and is
worth any "inconvenience" of having others involved in your work.

A second option is to examine the public use health data sets
available through the census bureau
(http://ferret.bls.census.gov/cgi-bin/ferret).  They have a very nice
web interface where you can select variables you are interested in and
then download the data.  They have several years of the NHIS (National
Health Interview Survey), the NHANES (I don't remember what it stands
for.), as well as others with health information.

The third option I would suggest is to see if your institution has a
demography dept. or a population research institute.  I think these
organizations typically house data and it may be available.  And there
is also ISR (http://www.psc.isr.umich.edu/dads/datapages.html) at
Michigan, and another population research center at Chapel Hill
(http://www.cpc.unc.edu/).

Good luck and I hope this is helpful.

Brian Flaherty
--
Brian P. Flaherty
The Pennsylvania State University       office phone:  814/863-5836
The Methodology Center                  fax:  814/863-0000
S-159 Henderson Bldg.                   email:  [log in to unmask]
University Park, PA, 16802              http://www.personal.psu.edu/~bxf4