Push for adult immunization registry considered

— The state Department of Health is considering again pushing for the creation of an immunization registry for adults so it can better track which vaccines Arkansans have received.

Dr. James Phillips, branch chief of infectious disease for the health department, said his agency hopes to support legislation this year that would expand Arkansas' existing children's immunization registry into one serving citizens 22 and older. Department spokesman Ed Barham later clarified no decision has been made on which legislative items will be recommended to the governor's office for consideration in the upcoming session but that the registry is among the possibilities.

Matt Decample, a spokesman for the Gov. Mike Beebe, said the governor has not made any decisions on his legislative packages while he awaits recommendations from the health department and other state agencies. Decample said Beebe likes "anything that can help establish thorough and accurate medical records for current and future treatment," though the cost and privacy safeguards of any registry proposal would have to be examined closely.

If proposed and then passed, the measure would create a centralized database detailing the vaccine date and type for each person who receives one.

Phillips said creating the registry is important because people often forget if they've had a certain vaccine or, if they did, when it was administered.

He pointed to the Feb. 24, 2007 tornado in Dumas, where dozens of buildings were destroyed and more than 25 people were injured. As state health officials made the rounds offering tetanus shots to the storm victims, they encountered a problem.

"When asked about when did you have your last tetanus booster, virtually no one knew when that was," Phillips said. "... If we had an adult registry, then we could answer these questions quite rapidly."

The registry would provide information like that on an individual level but also help determine health department actions on a larger scale.

Phillips said the children's registry - which was started in the 1980s, became law in 1995 and now has more than 2.9 million records on file - is used "all the time" for those purposes, such as examining the uptake percentage in a community experiencing a whooping cough outbreak and determining whether a vaccination effort is needed.

It would also provide quicker statistics on statewide vaccinations. The health department, for example, still doesn't know exactly how many doses of the H1N1 vaccine were administered and won't have a concrete figure until sometime later this year when numbers from individual providers are submitted.

Getting the registry passed would require overcoming privacy concerns that doomed previous efforts, Phillips said. The 2007 effort stalled in committee as opponents decried it as an intrusion into private lives and questioned whether the data would really be safe, Phillips said.

"We try to reinforce the confidentiality of this and also emphasize where it might become important on an individual basis," he said.

Barham said the statute creating the registry would have confidentiality laws built into it and that the information would also be protected by existing health privacy laws.

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