Covid-19 vaccine allocation guidance, new Hastings Center fellows

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Latest News
January 21, 2021


** Hastings Releases New Guidance on Covid-19 Vaccine Allocation
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Focuses on equitable and effective prioritization in the months ahead
The Hastings Center released new guidance for public health authorities and health care systems to help ensure equitable and effective prioritization of Covid-19 vaccine access in months ahead. Directed by Hastings Center research scholar Nancy Berlinger, the guidance articulates public health duties–to plan, to safeguard, to guide, and to collaborate–during vaccine distribution. These duties call on public health planners to go beyond simple age cut-offs to privilege: those who live or work in high-risk environments, including prisons or detention centers and neighborhoods where many people live in overcrowded housing and face other risk factors associated with socioeconomic inequities; home health aides who were passed over in the first phase; and essential workers, including food supply workers, transportation workers, and teachers. The guidance also stresses the importance of investing in programs to respectfully and effectively address vaccine hesitancy.Learn more about the new vaccine
allocation guidance here ([link removed]) . The latest document draws on the March 2020 Hastings Center Ethical Framework for Covid-19 response. Learn about all of The Hastings Center’s Covid-19 ethical frameworks and supplements ([link removed]) .




** Hastings Welcomes 14 New Fellows
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The Hastings Center is pleased to announce the election of 14 new fellows. Hastings Center fellows are a group of more than 200 individuals of outstanding accomplishment whose work has informed scholarship and public understanding of complex ethical issues in health, health care, science, and technology. Their common distinguishing feature is uncommon insight and impact in areas of critical concern to the Center–how best to understand and manage the inevitable values questions, moral uncertainties, and societal effects that arise as a consequence of advances in the life sciences, the need to improve health and health care for people of all ages, and mitigation of human impact on the natural world. Read about the new fellows ([link removed]) .


** In the Media: New "Layer of Protection" for Genomic Privacy
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Even when research participants’ raw genomic data is de-identified, there is still the potential for privacy breaches, which could result in discrimination against themselves and their relatives. One type of privacy breach is a linkage attack, which involves a malicious actor trying to identify genetic database donors by cross-referencing multiple genetic data registries. To protect against linkage attacks, a research team has developed a software technique that masks some of a person’s genetic variants yet still preserves where on the genome those variants are located. In an interview with Spectrum, Hastings Center research scholar Karen Maschke said, “The privacy-preserving data format they developed is another layer of protection.” Read the Spectrum article ([link removed]) .


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Upcoming Events
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"Advancing Social Justice, Health Equity, and Community," ([link removed]) the Daniel Callahan Annual Lecture, with Duke University professor Patrick T. Smith and Hastings Center president Mildred Solomon. February 9 at noon Eastern time on Zoom.

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The Hastings Center seeks to ensure responsible health and science policy and practice. We work to secure the wisest possible use of emerging technologies and fair, compassionate, and just health care for people across their lifespan.

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