42 U.S.C. § 242u — Improving State, local, and Tribal information sharing

This section addresses sharing public health data on communicable diseases. (a) In general. Working with state, local, and tribal public health officials, the Secretary may improve the availability of communicable-disease data and the sharing of it between the CDC Director, the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, and those officials. This data may come from: (1) health care providers and facilities; (2) public health and clinical laboratories; (3) health information exchanges and networks; and (4) state, local, and tribal health departments. (b) Content, form, and manner. The Secretary must work with officials and stakeholders on the content, form, and manner — including how data is deidentified — that best helps state, local, and tribal health departments respond to communicable diseases, including how demographic and other data is collected and reported. These requirements must line up with the standards the Secretary adopts under section 300jj–14. (c) Decreased burden. In coordinating this work, the Secretary must make reasonable efforts to limit the public health data reported to only what's minimally necessary for the public health purpose. (d) Exemption of certain public health data from disclosure. Acting through the CDC Director, the Secretary may exempt public health data gathered under this section from disclosure under section 552(b)(3) of title 5 (a Freedom of Information Act exemption) if: (1) an individual can be identified through the data; or (2) current scientific or statistical methods show there's at least a very small risk that the data, combined with the request or other available information or technology, could be used to figure out who an individual is.