July  2020

On July 17, AERA joined the public health and scientific communities in urging the Trump administration to reverse its decision to bypass the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the collection and analysis of Covid-19 patient data.

In a letter to Vice President Mike Pence; Deborah Birx, response coordinator of the White House Coronavirus Task Force; and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex M. Azar II, AERA and 100 other signatory organizations noted that moving medical data collection outside the CDC and bypassing the CDC as a recipient of data on Covid-19 patients would put the quality and integrity of the data at risk and undermine the nation’s response to the pandemic. 

“COVID-19 data collection and reporting must be done in a transparent manner and must not be politicized, as these data are essential to informing an effective response to the pandemic and to establishing public trust in the response,” said the letter. “Data transparency is particularly critical in the midst of an unprecedented national health crisis that is disproportionately impacting certain segments of the U.S. population, including Black/African American, Latinx, and Native American communities.”

The letter urged the administration to instead provide funding to enhance data collection and strengthen the role of the CDC in collecting and reporting COVID-19 data by race and ethnicity, hospital and ICU capacity, total number of tests and percent positive, hospitalizations, and deaths. This critical function belongs with our nation’s top public health agency.

“AERA encourages the administration to consult with practitioner and research communities to ensure the transparency and integrity of public health data, which are essential to informing an effective strategy to bring the pandemic under control,” said AERA Executive Director Felice J. Levine.