State Law Governance Of Health Information Technology

Howdy! So I am new to Texas A&M and that is the official Texas A&M greeting. It is a little awkward for a former California boy to say. Thank you very much to NSU for welcoming me. Thank you to the faculty and staff. It is really an honor to be here

Public Health Law and Policy Innovations: Social Impact Bonds

Social impact bonds (SIBs) are pay-for-success arrangements that can be used to address public health issues such as asthma and infant mortality. SIBs are used as financing mechanisms to raise upfront funding from private investors for social and public health preventative interventions. They function by leveraging the anticipated savings of prevention as a source for potential financial rewards for the intervention’s investors

Data Privacy in the Time of Plague

Data privacy is a life-or-death matter for public health. Beginning in late fall 2019, two series of events unfolded, one everyone talked about and one hardly anyone noticed: The greatest world-health crisis in at least 100 years, the COVID-19 pandemic; and the development of the Personal Data Protection Act Committee by the Uniform Law Commissioners (ULC) in the United States. By July 2021, each of these stories had reached a turning point. In the developed, Western world, most people who wanted to receive the vaccine against COVID- 19 could do so. Meanwhile, the ULC adopted the Uniform Personal Data Protection Act (UPDPA) at its annual meeting, paving the way for state legislatures to adopt it beginning in 2022. It has so far been introduced in three jurisdictions. These stories intersect in public health. Public health researchers struggled with COVID-19 in the United States because they lacked information about individuals who were exposed, among other matters. Understanding other public health threats (e.g., obesity, opioid abuse, racism) also requires linking diverse data on contributing social, environmental, and economic factors. The UPDPA removes some barriers to public health practice and research resulting from the lack of comprehensive federal privacy laws. Its full potential, however, can be achieved only with involvement of public health researchers and professionals. This article analyzes the UPDPA and other comprehensive state privacy statutes, noting the ways that they could promote—and hinder—public health. It concludes with recommendations for public health researchers and professionals to get involved in upcoming legislative debates on data privacy. Lives will depend on the outcomes