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Lawmakers hear privacy-focused bill to limit identifiers on live-birth data shared with CDC
Summary
Senate Bill 92 would prohibit disclosure of parental name, street address, medical-record number and parental birth date (keeping year only) with medical history when New Hampshire's birth-worksheet data are transmitted to federal systems; sponsors said DHHS supports and the secretary of state's office said a small federal funding risk may exist.
Senator Cindy Rosenwald, prime sponsor of Senate Bill 92, told the House committee the bill would restrict certain personally identifying fields transmitted with medical history from New Hampshire's live-birth worksheet to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Rosenwald said the bill would not change the information DHHS or the secretary of state's division of vital records hold internally but would preclude sending four identifiers — parents' names, parents' medical-record numbers, street address, and parents' exact birth dates — with medical history to the CDC. The baby's date of birth would continue to be shared.
Rosenwald said she had worked with DHHS and the vital records division on the proposal and said the intent was to protect sensitive personal and health information. "I consider myself a strong privacy advocate," Rosenwald said, arguing the change would reduce government access to patient-identified health information sent to the federal level.
Deputy Secretary of State Erin Hennessy and Kristen Martino, state registrar for vital records, told the committee they had worked with the sponsor and were comfortable with the Senate amendments, but noted a possible small federal funding risk: the division could lose a roughly $60,000 federal grant tied to the data it supplies to CDC if a data element is withheld. They said they had not received a definitive answer from CDC on that point.
Representatives of DHHS said the department takes its role protecting sensitive health data seriously and said the department uses birth-worksheet data for multiple public-health programs. DHHS testified it had worked with the sponsor and took a neutral position in committee. The department said it did not expect a fiscal impact from the proposed change but noted programmatic uses rely on access to the data.
Committee members asked about ZIP-code sharing for small populations and opt-out options; Rosenwald and the vital records deputy indicated the parties would work further to clarify language about ZIP codes and small-population suppression.
No formal committee action or vote was recorded during the public hearing; the committee subsequently recessed and moved to other hearings.
