The information collected from your medical record and that you provide in the online/paper surveys or interviews, emails and phone calls will be part of study data shared with research partners at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Abt Associates, and Marshfield Clinic Research Lab. These organizations will be involved in data collection and management for the study. We will not disclose any information that could identify you, such as your name, telephone number or email, with any other party for any other purpose without your permission.
We will also follow the rules and guidance of your state public health authority. If they require that SARSCoV-2 test results and your contact information must be reported to the state public health authority, we will do so and notify you of this. The state public health authority requires us to report all test results to them. The test results will be uploaded to the state public health system. Your information will be kept confidential. While we cannot disclose a positive test to your employer, we do encourage you to follow the employee health guidelines about reporting a positive test and taking the steps appropriate to prevent passing the virus to co-workers and patients.
To help us protect your privacy, we have obtained a Certificate of Confidentiality from the National Institutes of Health. With this Certificate, the researchers cannot be forced to disclose information that may identify you, even by a court subpoena, in any federal, state, or local civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceedings. The researchers will use the Certificate to resist any demands for information that would identify you, except for cases where you or the researcher may choose to voluntarily disclose the protected information under certain circumstances. For example, we may disclose medical information in cases of medical necessity, or take steps (including notifying authorities) to protect you or someone else from serious harm, including child or elder abuse. Additionally, if you request the release of information about you in writing (through, for example, a written request to release medical records to an insurance company), the Certificate does not protect against that voluntary disclosure. This certificate does not prevent the researchers from releasing information about you to prevent serious harm to you or someone else. Moreover, federal agencies may review our records under limited circumstances, such as a Department of Health and Human Services request for information for an audit or program evaluation [or as required by the Food and Drug Administration].