In the realm of health care, privacy protections are needed to preserve patients' dignity and prevent possible harms. Ten years ago, to address these concerns as well as set guidelines for ethical health research, Congress called for a set of federal standards now known as the HIPAA Privacy Rule. In its 2009 report, Beyond the HIPAA Privacy Rule: Enhancing Privacy, Improving Health Through Research, the Institute of Medicine's Committee on Health Research and the Privacy of Health Information concludes that the HIPAA Privacy Rule does not protect privacy as well as it should, and that it impedes important health research.

The need for quality improvement and for cost saving are driving both individual choices and health system dynamics. The health services research that we need to support informed choices depends on access to data, but at the same time, individual privacy and patient-health care provider confidentiality must be protected.

Family caregiving affects millions of Americans every day, in all walks of life. At least 17.7 million individuals in the United States are caregivers of an older adult with a health or functional limitation. The nation's family caregivers provide the lion's share of long-term care for our older adult population. They are also central to older adults' access to and receipt of health care and community-based social services. Yet the need to recognize and support caregivers is among the least appreciated challenges facing the aging U.S. population. Families Caring for an Aging America examines the prevalence and nature of family caregiving of older adults and the available evidence on the effectiveness of programs, supports, and other interventions designed to support family caregivers. This report also assesses and recommends policies to address the needs of family caregivers and to minimize the barriers that they encounter in trying to meet the needs of older adults.

Protecting Your Health Privacy empowers ordinary citizens with the legal and technological knowledge and know-how we need to protect ourselves and our families from prying corporate eyes, medical identity theft, ruinous revelations of socially stigmatizing diseases, and illegal punitive practices by insurers and employers. It's a new era in healthcare. Gone are the day when access to your medical records is limited to you and your doctor. Instead, today, a diverse group of constituencies have interest in and access to your health information. A cascade of changes in technology and the delivery of healthcare are increasing the vulnerability of your medical information. Accordingly, it is now more important than ever to take control over your own health information and take steps to protect your information against privacy breaches that can adversely impact the quality of your health care, your insurability, your employability, your relationships, and your reputation. In clear, non-technical language, privacy lawyer Jacqueline Klosek teaches readers the basics you need to know as an individual healthcare consumer about the ongoing wave of national and state legislation affecting patient privacy: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) of 2009, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. She untangles the increasingly complex ways by which health care providers, insurers, employers, social networking sites, and marketers routinely collect, use, and share our personal health information. Protecting Your Health Privacy: A Citizen's Guide to Safeguarding the Security of Your Medical Information empowers ordinary citizens with the knowledge and know-how we need to protect ourselves and our families from prying eyes, medical identity theft, ruinous revelations of socially stigmatizing diseases, and illegal punitive practices by insurers and employers.

This User’s Guide is intended to support the design, implementation, analysis, interpretation, and quality evaluation of registries created to increase understanding of patient outcomes. For the purposes of this guide, a patient registry is an organized system that uses observational study methods to collect uniform data (clinical and other) to evaluate specified outcomes for a population defined by a particular disease, condition, or exposure, and that serves one or more predetermined scientific, clinical, or policy purposes. A registry database is a file (or files) derived from the registry. Although registries can serve many purposes, this guide focuses on registries created for one or more of the following purposes: to describe the natural history of disease, to determine clinical effectiveness or cost-effectiveness of health care products and services, to measure or monitor safety and harm, and/or to measure quality of care. Registries are classified according to how their populations are defined. For example, product registries include patients who have been exposed to biopharmaceutical products or medical devices. Health services registries consist of patients who have had a common procedure, clinical encounter, or hospitalization. Disease or condition registries are defined by patients having the same diagnosis, such as cystic fibrosis or heart failure. The User’s Guide was created by researchers affiliated with AHRQ’s Effective Health Care Program, particularly those who participated in AHRQ’s DEcIDE (Developing Evidence to Inform Decisions About Effectiveness) program. Chapters were subject to multiple internal and external independent reviews.

Protecting Your Health Privacy empowers ordinary citizens with the legal and technological knowledge and know-how we need to protect ourselves and our families from prying corporate eyes, medical identity theft, ruinous revelations of socially stigmatizing diseases, and illegal punitive practices by insurers and employers. It's a new era in healthcare. Gone are the day when access to your medical records is limited to you and your doctor. Instead, today, a diverse group of constituencies have interest in and access to your health information. A cascade of changes in technology and the delivery of healthcare are increasing the vulnerability of your medical information. Accordingly, it is now more important than ever to take control over your own health information and take steps to protect your information against privacy breaches that can adversely impact the quality of your health care, your insurability, your employability, your relationships, and your reputation. In clear, non-technical language, privacy lawyer Jacqueline Klosek teaches readers the basics you need to know as an individual healthcare consumer about the ongoing wave of national and state legislation affecting patient privacy: the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) of 2010, the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH) of 2009, and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996. She untangles the increasingly complex ways by which health care providers, insurers, employers, social networking sites, and marketers routinely collect, use, and share our personal health information. Protecting Your Health Privacy: A Citizen's Guide to Safeguarding the Security of Your Medical Information empowers ordinary citizens with the knowledge and know-how we need to protect ourselves and our families from prying eyes, medical identity theft, ruinous revelations of socially stigmatizing diseases, and illegal punitive practices by insurers and employers.

Health Protection: Principles and practice is a practical guide for practitioners working at all levels in public health and health protection, including those with a non-specialist background. It is the first textbook in health protection to address all three domains within the field (communicable disease control; emergency preparedness, resilience and response (EPRR); and environmental public health) in a comprehensive and integrated manner. Written by leading practitioners in the field, the book is rooted in a practice-led, all-hazards approach, which allows for easy real-world application of the topics discussed. The chapters are arranged in six sections, which begin with an in-depth introduction to the principles of health protection and go on to illuminate the three key elements of the field by providing: case studies and scenarios to describe common and important issues in the practice of health protection; health protection tools, which span epidemiology and statistics, infection control, immunisation, disease surveillance, and audit and service improvement; and evidence about new and emerging health protection issues. It includes more than 100 health protection checklists (SIMCARDs), covering infections from anthrax to yellow fever, non-infectious diseases emergencies and environmental hazards. Written from first-hand experience of managing communicable diseases these provide practical, stand-alone quick reference guides for in-practice use. Both the topical content of Health Protection: Principles and practice, and the clearly described health protection principles the book provides, makes it a highly relevant resource for wider public health and health protection professionals in this continually evolving field.