Capturing Pediatric Health and Medication Use in a US National Health Data Network

Assessing medication safety in the pediatric population can take many forms, but given the shortcomings of traditional methods, there has been a shift toward leveraging real-world data to bolster these efforts. To characterize demographics, enrollment, and health characteristics among pediatric members in the Sentinel Distributed Database (SDD).

Using administrative healthcare data from the SDD between January 1, 2000, and May 8, 2023, we used descriptive statistics to characterize the demographics, enrollment, and select health characteristics of pediatric members in the following age groups: 29 days – <24 months (infants), 2 – <6 years (young children), 6  – <12 years (older children), 12 – <18 years (early adolescents), and 18–21 years (late adolescents).