Medical Xpress August 8, 2024
It’s not easy to make public health decisions without access to good data. And epidemiologists and public health workers for Native American communities say they’re often in the dark because state and federal agencies restrict their access to the latest numbers.
The 2010 reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act gave tribal epidemiology centers public health authority and requires the federal Department of Health and Human Services to grant them access to and use of data and other protected health information that’s regularly distributed to state and local officials. But tribal epidemiology center workers have told government investigators that’s not often the case.
By July 2020, American Indians and Alaskan Natives had a COVID-19 infection rate 3½ times that...
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