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 cutoffs 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. 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.

 


 

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.





 
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