Chapter 8.C.3 (6.C.3)  Confidentiality, Reporting, and Contact Tracing

Notes: Informational Privacy (page 934/643)

Note 4. Statutory and Common Law Protections

    Technological developments over the last two decades have greatly enhanced the state’s ability to gather and store public health information.  In A Model for Expanded Public Health Reporting in the Context of HIPAA, 15 J Am Med Inform Assoc. 569 (2008), Soumitra Sengupta, Neil S. Calman, and George Hripcsak consider how a balance might be struck between modern public health surveillance and reporting capabilities and patients’ right to privacy and confidentiality

    For a historical overview of the tension between public health surveillance and reporting and individual privacy rights in the U.S., see Amy L. Fairchild, The Democratization of Privacy:  Public-Health Surveillance and Changing Conceptions of Privacy in Twentieth-Century America in History and Health Policy in the United States (Rosemary A. Stevens et al., eds., 2006).

Notes: Reporting and Contact Tracing (page 937/647)

Note 3. Contact Tracing (page 938/647)

In 2008, MMWR issued a report entitled Recommendations for Partner Services Programs for HIV Infection, Syphilis, Gonorrhea, and Chlamydial Infection.  To view the report, see Recommendations for Partner Services Programs for HIV Infection, Syphilis, Gonorrhea, and Chlamydial Infection, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/rr5709a1.htm.

Email and other Internet technologies have begun to play a significant role in partner notification.  A 2004 survey conducted by the San Francisco Department of Public Health (SFDPH) and Internet Sexuality Information Services (ISIS) showed that men who have sex with men in San Francisco would be more willing to inform sex partners that they were diagnosed with an STD if there was a simple and anonymous way to pass on the information.  Based on that finding, ISIS developed an online STD partner notification system.  The system allows people to notify partners of an STD diagnosis using electronic postcards.  The system, inSPOT was introduced in San Francisco in 2004, and has since been implemented in nine U.S. cities and eleven U.S. states, as well as Canada and Romania.  See Deb Levine et al., inSPOT:  The First Online STD Partner Notification System Using Electronic Postcards 5(10) PLoS Med 213 (2008).  To access inSPOT’s website, go to http://www.inspot.org/gateway.aspx.