Legislative Prospectus: Data Modernization and Privacy Protections
January 19, 2022
Data collection and analysis is core to public health, however the COVID-19 pandemic revealed a public health system reliant on outdated technology due to chronic underinvestment. In 2019, the CDC launched the Public Health Data Modernization Initiative (DMI) to design and implement a modern, interoperable, and real-time public health data sharing environment. In addition to federal funding for public health data modernization, states and territories are enacting laws to better facilitate public health data collection and sharing while protecting people’s privacy.
ASTHO has been following legislative trends relating to state improvements to the Immunization Information Systems, legislation relating to state Health Information Exchanges, and efforts to promote consumer data privacy while maintaining public health data sharing.