Sallie Milam, JD, CIPP/US/G, is a deputy director of the Network’s Mid-States Region Office. Sallie has practiced law for over 25 years primarily in the health, HIPAA and general privacy areas. She is a Certified Information Privacy Professional, with U.S. and government privacy certifications. She has extensive experience in working with state agencies on data related issues. From 2003 to 2018, Sallie served as West Virginia’s chief privacy officer and led the executive branch’s privacy program. Previously, Sallie facilitated data sharing through her service as the West Virginia Health Care Authority’s privacy officer and as HIPAA senior legal counsel, where she led HIPAA privacy implementation across the West Virginia executive branch. Additionally, she was the first executive director of the West Virginia Health Information Network, which is West Virginia’s statewide health information exchange, and was West Virginia’s project director for its Nationwide Health Information Network contract.
When health care providers, public health and others create, use and share data, governance is required to ensure that trust is maintained and interoperability risks are appropriately managed. This webinar will highlight how governance is achieved by providing coordination and oversight through a policy framework, a decision-making body and trust agreement.
Data are essential for public health surveillance, epidemiological investigation, research, program development, implementation and evaluation. Sharing data across government agencies assists in addressing social determinants of health, environmental needs and risk factors; in better aligning services that support individuals; and in enhanced public health surveillance. Further, better information for health and human services agencies generally produces better care.
The Network recently held a two-day Summit focused on strategies to collect, use, share and protect multi-sector data to improve the health of communities. In this Q & A, Sallie Milam, J.D. and Jennifer Bernstein, J.D. deputy directors at the Network’s Mid-States Region Office, which organized the Summit, discuss why the Summit was so important to those working with health data and public health.
The Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) enables health information to be shared nationwide by public health, government agencies, individuals, providers, payers and technology developers. TEFCA promises to position public health to work faster and more efficiently towards health equity by enabling better reporting, cross-jurisdictional information exchange, surveillance, tracking and outbreak investigation.
Join us for a discussion of how a modern information infrastructure, built with health and non-health data that are locally relevant, is critical to both public health and its community partners to increase health equity. We will examine how public health may more widely use de-identification to make more timely, reliable, sub-county and actionable data available. This webinar will provide an in-depth look at the benefits of utilizing de-identified data and the mechanics of disclosing it.
Building healthy communities requires access to relevant data from multiple sectors, including public health, health care, schools, human services, housing and law enforcement. Because they can be complex to navigate, federal and state laws governing data collection, use, and sharing can act as barriers to data use. With specialized knowledge in the use of data, privacy officers can help reduce this complexity, making data more accessible to the agencies they serve.
This toolkit is intended for privacy officers, public health practitioners and their attorneys. It includes legal, policy and practical guidance to understand and implement HIPAA’s hybrid entity option.
This toolkit provides public health practitioners and others with the tools and resources to better understand de-identification for improved collection and use activities, and to more freely, safely and legally disclose de-identified data needed for the community’s information infrastructure.
