NACDD coordinates the Multi-State EHR-Based Network for Disease Surveillance (MENDS), which generates estimates of chronic disease measures at both the national and local levels. To develop a new MENDS data dashboard, which visualizes chronic disease prevalence, NACDD considered needs to provide data at the ZIP code level to be valuable for meaningful public health actions. Because this granularity is more than what is allowable under the Safe Harbor provision of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), NACDD decided to engage with privacy experts to establish that the chance of identifying any individual within the data would be “very small” and to support more robust, public-facing data availability.
Privacy Analytics, an IQVIA company with technology and expertise on transformative data privacy solutions, worked with NACDD, providing guidance on how to meet very high standards of privacy protection. A case study highlights this collaboration to facilitate the future public availability of weighted clinical data to inform chronic disease surveillance and practice.