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Why it Matters:
Without timely access to health data, Tribes and Tribal Epidemiology Centers cannot effectively track the spread of disease, make data-informed decisions, identify those at high risk for severe illness or mortality, or evaluate public health interventions. To provide tribes with public health support, Congress required the establishment of TECs and, in the 2010 permanent reauthorization of the Indian Health Care Improvement Act, directed that HHS must provide TECs with access to “data, data sets, monitoring systems, delivery systems, and other protected health information” in the possession of the agency. Tribal leaders have long raised concerns about the continued difficulty of attaining data about their own Tribal citizens from federal agencies. The withholding of such data is a violation of both Tribal sovereignty and federal law.
This new HHS policy and consultation come in response to the Government Accountability Office’s (GAO) March 2022 report Tribal Epidemiology Centers: HHS Actions Needed to Enhance Data Access. The GAO found that TECs have faced significant barriers and widely varying and inconsistent processes for accessing needed data, even during public health emergencies. The report recommended that HHS develop a policy clarifying that HHS data be made available to TECs in compliance with federal law. HHS began the process of developing a Tribal data sharing policy in an October 2022 Tribal consultation. The goal of the resulting draft policy is to address data sharing issues that Tribes and Tribal Epidemiology Centers face when trying to access HHS data.
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