Publicly Released: May 26, 2022
The purpose of this management advisory is to inform the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness that race codes used in the Military Health System Data Repository (MDR) did not comply with DoD policies. We determined that race codes and categories in the MDR, administered by the Defense Health Agency (DHA), did not comply with Office of Management and Budget and DoD regulations. For example, DHA databases contained more than 36 million records that contained noncompliant coding. Furthermore, the Defense Manpower Data Center transmitted the categories and codes to multiple DHA databases, further disseminating the noncompliant race codes and categories.