Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #109348

Wendy K. Mariner, JD, LLM, MPH, Boston University, 715 Albany Street, Boston, MA 02118, 617 638-4626, wmariner@bu.edu

Public health surveillance programs now cover chronic and genetic conditions as well as contagious diseases. Emergency preparedness efforts encourage new surveillance systems to detect bioterrorist acts or contagious disease emergencies. Other proposals would merge expanded programs into a national health database, linked to insurance databases and/or law enforcement and national security agencies. This presentation examines the promise different surveillance systems hold for preventing a national emergency, such as an avian influenza epidemic, as well as learning more about disease distribution and etiology. It then analyzes potential perils facing such systems from conflicts in the different laws (constitutional, statutory, regulatory including the HIPAA privacy rule, and common law) that govern disease prevention, medical privacy, and research with human subjects. New surveillance systems that create databases of individually identifiable information for research challenge several established legal principles that apply to research of all kinds. Alternative ways to resolve the tension are evaluated, and a legal framework recommended for constructing different types of public health surveillance systems.

Learning Objectives:

• Distinguish among different methods of collecting and using surveillance data.
• Recognize how different laws affect the collection and use of different types of data.
• Evaluate the legality of different surveillance systems.

Keywords: Law, Human Rights

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.