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A National Review of the Law on Health Information Privacy

Lawrence O. Gostin, JD; Zita Lazzarini, JD, MPH; Verla S. Neslund, JD; Michael T. Osterholm, PhD, MPH

JAMA. 1996;275(24):1921-1927.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Our objectives were to review and analyze the laws in the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico that regulate the acquisition, storage, and use of public health data and to offer proposals for reform of the laws on public health information privacy. Virtually all states reported some statutory protection for governmentally maintained health data for public health information in general (49 states), communicable diseases (42 states), and sexually transmitted diseases (43 states). State statutes permitted disclosure of data for statistical purposes (42 states), contact tracing (39 states), epidemiologic investigations (22 states), and subpoena or court order (14 states). The survey revealed significant problems that affect both the development of fair and effective public health information systems and the protection of privacy. Statutes may be silent about the degree of privacy protection afforded, confer weaker privacy protection to certain kinds of information, or grant health officials broad discretion . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
From the Georgetown/Johns Hopkins Program on Law and Public Health, Washington, DC, and Baltimore, Md (Mr Gostin); Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Mass (Ms Lazzarini); Office of the General Counsel, US Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC (Ms Neslund); and Acute Disease Epidemiology Section, Minnesota Department of Health, Minneapolis (Dr Osterholm).

Footnotes
The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists, or the Carter Presidential Center.

Reprints: Lawrence O. Gostin, JD, Georgetown University Law Center, 600 New Jersey Ave NW, Washington, DC 20001.

Health Law and Ethics section editors: Lawrence O. Gostin, JD, the Georgetown/ Johns Hopkins University Program on Law and Public Health, Washington, DC, and Baltimore, Md; Helene M. Cole, MD, Contributing Editor, JAMA.

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