#harvard taskforce

[eretzyisrael]

by Maya Sulkin

Garber insists that the university has “made it abundantly clear that we do not take lightly our moral duty to fight antisemitism,” and has “taken many steps to address antisemitism on our campus,” as he wrote in his letter to the Harvard community last week. But not everyone sees it that way.

Rabbi David Wolpe is one of them. He received a call on October 8, 2023—a day after Hamas’s attack on Israel—from a “shaken up” Claudine Gay, asking the Harvard Divinity School visiting professor for advice. She ended up forming an Antisemitism Advisory Group and asking Wolpe to join. Summers cautioned Wolpe not to take the position for fear he was “being used,” but Wolpe accepted anyway. Two months later, in December 2023, Wolpe resigned from the advisory group, stating that “both events on campus and [Claudine Gay’s] painfully inadequate testimony reinforced the idea that I cannot make the sort of difference I had hoped.”

When I asked Wolpe about Harvard’s current antisemitism task force, he told me that while Garber “takes antisemitism seriously, people underestimate the amount of institutional resistance at many, many levels that a president of Harvard finds when it comes to dealing with antisemitism.”

Wolpe added that “many people at Harvard are themselves either mildly or seriously antisemitic,” and others “don’t believe that antisemitism is a problem, and Jews are just the paragon of white privilege.” Between those two constituencies, said Wolpe, “I don’t know how much more Garber could or couldn’t do,” and that “it’s an extraordinarily thorny path to navigate to change that ethos.”

Adding to concerns about Harvard’s antisemitism problem are fears over the precipitous fall in the number of Jewish undergraduates at the university. As of 2023, that figure is estimated at lower than 5 percent, compared to almost 25 percent in the 1970s.

When I asked Larry Summers about the decline in Jewish students at Harvard, he told me that he does not think it is evidence of antisemitism. “I certainly am not serene about Harvard and antisemitism, but I have seen no credible basis for believing that the decline in the Jewish fraction of the Harvard student body results from anti-Jewish discrimination,” he said. “Rather, it is an arithmetic consequence of efforts and developments leading to more African American, Hispanic, Asian, and more students from disadvantaged backgrounds—which had been a priority of mine—and more foreign students being admitted to Harvard.”

The only thing Harvard’s task force has produced since it was established more than a year ago is a list of preliminary recommendations. They urged the university to issue “statements condemning forms of discrimination and affirming existing values” and “fund a visiting professorship in Palestinian studies.”

The preliminary recommendations also noted that the task force’s “listening sessions provided abundant reports that since last October, and to some extent long before then, many Jewish students (and especially Israeli students) have been subject to shunning, harassment, and intimidation.”

Last May, the co-chairs of the task force wrote an op-ed in which they detailed the “appalling” things they had heard in listening sessions with Harvard students and faculty members. They recounted instances of “doxxing,” and students who “did not take certain classes because they believed the instructor would treat a Jewish or Israeli student unfairly.” But since then, the task force has gone quiet.

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

Source

[1americanconservative]

@ShabbosK

As of tonight, our lawsuit against Harvard University has just ADDED two Jewish plaintiffs!

Harvard thought they could quickly settle this before Trump's inauguration, but it backfired.

Jewish students at Harvard University have been physically assaulted, spat on, and denied access to education.

Harvard has taken no action in response.

Additionally, we will continue speaking with DOGE, policymakers, and the Federal Antisemitism Taskforce to ensure Harvard's federal funds are revoked and its endowment taxed.

To Claudine Gay, Alan Garber, Penny Pritzker, and Marla Frederick: you all brought this upon yourself.

See you in court.

Onward to victory!

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Robert Mackey at The Guardian:

The US Department of Education informed Harvard University on Monday that it was ending billions of dollars in research grants and other aid unless the school accedes to a list of demands from the Trump administration that would in effect cede control of the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university to the government. The news was delivered to Dr Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, in a deeply partisan letter from Linda McMahon, the education secretary, which she also posted on social media. “This letter is to inform you that Harvard should no longer seek grants from the federal government, since none will be provided,” McMahon wrote. The main reason for the crackdown on Harvard is the school’s rejection of a long list of demands from the Trump administration’s antisemitism taskforce, prompted by campus protests against Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks of 7 October 2023. McMahon also accuses the university of “a systematic pattern of violating federal law”.

As Garber explained in a message to the Harvard community last month, the university decided to sue the federal government only after the Trump administration froze $2.2bn in funding, threatened to freeze an additional $1bn in grants, “initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status”. The government’s “sweeping and intrusive demands would impose unprecedented and improper control over the university”, Garber wrote. In its lawsuit against the Trump administration, Harvard said the government’s funding cuts would have stark “real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff [and] researchers” by ending crucial medical and scientific research. The text of McMahon’s letter, much like a Truth Social post from Donald Trump, is littered with all-caps words. “Where do many of these ‘students’ come from, who are they, how do they get into Harvard, or even into our country – and why is there so much HATE? “Harvard University has made a mockery of this country’s higher education system. It has invited foreign students, who engage in violent behavior and show contempt for the United States of America, to its campus,” McMahon claims. The university recently published its own, in-depth investigation of allegations that Gaza solidarity protests had crossed the line into antisemitism, and a second that looked at anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and anti-Palestinian bias.

But McMahon’s letter is not mainly about the claim that Jewish students feel unsafe at Harvard – a view the school’s president, who is himself Jewish, has some sympathy with – but is filled with extended diatribes about a series of other grievances, including: the supposed far-left politics of Penny Pritzker, a member of the university’s governing board who previously served as US commerce secretary during the Obama administration; the complaints of the Harvard alumnus and Trump supporter Bill Ackman; what McMahon calls the “ugly racism” of Harvard’s efforts to diversify its student body; complaints about what Fox News has termed a “remedial math” course which is intended to address gaps in new students’ math skills following the Covid pandemic; accusations that the Harvard Law Review has discriminated against white authors; and two brief fellowships the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health offered to the former mayors of New York and Chicago, Bill de Blasio and Lori Lightfoot.

The Trump Regime’s war on academic freedom targeting Harvard University is an un-American abomination.

See Also:

Daily Kos: Trump holds federal funding hostage as war on Harvard escalates

[danielchammasattorney]

FordHarrison DEIA Group Ahead of Movement to Dismantle DEI Programs

An employment law practice, FordHarrison not only represents clients facing these legal issues, it also is proactive in helping companies nationwide protect their DEI initiatives. The firm’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Audit (DEIA) Taskforce helps employers develop and maintain programs that support diversity in the workplace through legal guidance.

Established by FordHarrison’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Practice Group, the DEIA Taskforce was launched in November 2023 to guide employers who have incorporated DEI initiatives on how to strengthen these programs to align with legal mandates. The DEIA audit analyzes employer DEI programs to see if they are in accordance with federal, state, and local laws. The taskforce then assists companies in bringing the programs into compliance.

The development of the taskforce comes on the heels of the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard lawsuit seen before the U.S. Supreme Court, which involved the esteemed university being sued for race-based admissions practices. The argument was that the practice violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 because it favored white students over Asian students. Ultimately, the court sided with Harvard.

While employment and school admissions are two separate issues, DEI and the programs that support diversity in higher education and the workplace are essentially the same. SFFA v. Harvard set the stage for attacking DEI initiatives, even in the workplace. As it stands, the American Alliance for Equal Rights has sued a minority-focused venture capital fund and several law firms across the country for their DEI policies.

The DEIA Taskforce is designed to help employers create policies that comply with legal mandates. For more information on this program, please visit fordharrison.com.

[warningsine]

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/singapores-new-leader-lawrence-wong-2024-05-15/

SINGAPORE, May 15 (Reuters) - Lawrence Wong, 51, will take over as prime minister of Singapore on Wednesday, becoming the fourth leader of the Asian financial hub since its independence in 1965.

Wong succeeds Lee Hsien Loong, the son of the founding father of modern Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, after two decades at the helm.

BACKGROUND

Wong was born on 18 December 1972 to a family he described as ordinary. His father worked in a sales job and his mother taught in a primary school that Wong and his elder brother attended.

Wong and his family lived in a public housing estate in Eastern Singapore called Marine Parade.

EDUCATION

While many politicians in Singapore have tended to come from top-ranked British universities such as Oxford or Cambridge, Wong did not attend elite schools. He went to local schools regarded as ordinary and in an interview said it was very natural for him to study near home where his friends were.

He studied economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has said he picked the United States because it was home to his favourite musicians.

Wong has a Master's degree in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.

CAREER

Wong is a government scholar and started his career as an economist at the trade ministry.

He has occupied some of the biggest jobs in Singapore's bureaucracy, including chief executive of the Energy Market Authority and the prestigious post of Principal Private Secretary to the prime minister.

He entered politics in 2011 and was appointed to the board of directors of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, the central bank. He later held the culture, national development, and education portfolios.

In 2020, he catapulted into the spotlight as co-chair of the COVID-19 taskforce and won favour for his unflappable demeanour when explaining tough pandemic restrictions to Singaporeans.

Wong was named finance minister in 2021. The following year he was appointed deputy prime minister and successor to Lee, after winning over his peers to receive their backing to become "first among equals" - a term Singapore's top politicians use to describe their chosen leader. He served as chairman of the central bank board since 2023.

PERSONAL LIFE

Wong's social media is replete with videos of him strumming a guitar - including one of Taylor Swift's Love Story posted during the height of Swift-craze when the star performed in Singapore.

He is a music lover who was gifted a guitar from his father at age 8. Wong put his skills to good use and busked while studying in the United States. He also describes himself as a bookworm and a dog-lover.

Wong married in his 20s and was divorced due to what he said were incompatibility issues. The former wife's identity is not widely known.

Wong has since remarried. His wife, Loo Tze Lui, works in wealth management and the couple has no children. Wong is a Methodist Christian

[qnewsau]

Health Equity Matters appoints new CEO

New Post has been published on https://qnews.com.au/health-equity-matters-appoints-new-ceo/

Health Equity Matters appoints new CEO

Health Equity Matters, formerly known as the Australian Federation of AIDS Organisations (AFAO), has announced the appointment of Dash Heath-Paynter as the peak national body’s new Chief Executive Officer.

Heath-Paynter takes on the leadership of Health Equity Matters after serving almost eight years as deputy CEO under former CEO Darryl O’Donnell.

He had already been the organisation’s acting CEO since O’Donnell’s departure in December.

During those eight years as deputy CEO, Heath-Paynter oversaw policy development, and political advocacy and engagement for Health Equality Matters.

That encompassed the national LGBTQIA+ community’s response to Mpox, including co-chairing the National Mpox Taskforce.

“We are delighted to confirm the appointment of Dash Heath-Paynter as our new chief executive,” Health Equity Matters president Mark Orr AM said in announcing the news.

“Dash brings deep, sustained experience in HIV and LGBTIQA+ health advocacy and policy.

“Dash’s skills and experience will serve our communities well as we push for the virtual elimination of HIV transmission and a more robust community-led response to the health needs of LGBTIQA+ communities.”

Heath-Paynter is a member of the Medical Services Advisory Committee PICO Advisory Sub-Committee; the Therapeutics Goods Administration’s Advertising Consultative Committee, the National HIV PrEP Guidelines Committee and the National HIV Testing Policy Expert Reference Committee.

“It is a profound honour and privilege to take on the executive leadership of the Health Equity Matters at this pivotal moment,” Heath-Paynter said, on appointment to the role in late March.

“My predecessor, Adjunct Professor Darryl O’Donnell established strong foundations for us to make monumental progress towards better health responses for LGBTIQA+ people, the virtual elimination of HIV transmission and continuing support for people living with HIV.

“We have an incredibly talented and motivated team at Health Equity Matters and we take seriously our role in protecting and promoting the partnership of researchers, clinicians, community and government that is at the centre of Australia’s HIV response.

“I look forward to working closely with the Federal Government to drive further progress for the communities we represent and serve.”

Prior to joining Health Equity Matters, Heath-Paynter worked as a senior policy analyst at Health Equity Matters’ Victorian member organisation, the Victorian AIDS Council, now known as Thorne Harbour Health.

He is also an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the Kirby Institute at the University of NSW, holds degrees in law and arts, and is a graduate of the Harvard University Kennedy School of Government’s Executive Leadership Program.

AFAO was formed by the leaders of Australia’s state and territory community AIDS organisations in 1985 in response to the HIV epidemic.

Soon after AFAO’s establishment, the federal government began work on Australia’s first National HIV/AIDS Strategy and AFAO was authorised by its members to coordinate community input into the process and their work continues to this day.

Health Equality Matters and its member organisations are also active contributors to the global fight against HIV and support the work of regional community partners including the Asia Pacific Council of AIDS Service Organisations (APCASO) and the Asia Pacific Coalition on Male Sexual Health (APCOM).

-For more information go to www.healthequitymatters.org.au

For the latest LGBTIQA+ Sister Girl and Brother Boy news, entertainment, community stories in Australia, visit qnews.com.au. Check out our latest magazines or find us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.

[mermaider00]

I just came up with the greatest crossover

The switching of L Lawliet and Elle Woods. The two L/Elle’s

L suddenly finds himself at Harvard as a law student and Elle needs to catch Kira with the taskforce.

Soichiro: You’re… going to stop Kira?

Elle: What, like it’s hard?

[anniekoh]

elsewhere on the internet: coronavirus continued

California State Assemblymember David Chiu and other CA electeds call for a moratorium on evictions, utility shut-offs, foreclosures

Municipalities suspending evictions in the coronavirus era

Strange COVID-19 Bedfellows: Gnawing Anxiety and Under-Reaction 

Risk communication specialists Peter M. Sandman and Jody Lanard

Social Science of Covid-19  March 13, 2020 by sociology professor Amara Miller at CSU East Bay

Italy and South Korea virus outbreaks reveal disparity in deaths and tactics March 12, 2020 Reuters Special Report by Emilio Parodi, Stephen Jewkes, Sangmi Cha, Ju-min Park

Making sense of the coronavirus. “What to Know” podcast interview on March 12 with Dr. Angela Rasmussen, virologist at Columbia University’s School of Public Health

Advice for journalists on how to vet specialists as COVID-19 sources March 12, 2020 Bara Vaida (@barav) at Association of Health Care Journalists Bonus: recommended experts active on Twitter

Gender and the Coronavirus outbreak at Think Global Health; Coronavirus taskforce made up almost entirely of men?; Domestic violence during China’s mass quarantine; Richmond, VA journalist on Covid-19 impacts on working class mothers  

Science

Tracing the spread of #covid19 incubation and mutation @trvrb on transmission of novel #coronavirus revealed by genomic epidemiology

80% of Covid-19 cases are��“mild” based on Chinese data. Mild cases include pneumonia

NYTimes op-ed on reducing transmission rates from March 4 by Joseph Allen (@j_g_allen) director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard’s School of Public Health

First, bringing in more outdoor air in buildings with heating and ventilation systems (or opening windows in buildings that don’t) helps dilute airborne contaminants, making infection less likely. For years, we have been doing the opposite: sealing our windows shut and recirculating air. The result are schools and office buildings that are chronically underventilated. This not only gives a boost to disease transmission, including common scourges like the norovirus or the common flu, but also significantly impairs cognitive function.

A study published just last year found that ensuring even minimum levels of outdoor air ventilation reduced influenza transmission as much as having 50 percent to 60 percent of the people in a building vaccinated.

[volunteerismandanarchy]

Sam Harris speaks with Matt Ridley and Alina Chan about the origins of the COVID pandemic. They discuss the evidence of a lab leak from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, media and academic censorship of this topic, the history of collaboration between western scientists and Chinese labs, the risks of "gain-of-function" research, the evidence for the zoonotic origins of SARS-CoV-2, the initial complacency and denialism of the Chinese, the biosafety levels at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, molecular evidence of a lab leak, the practical constraints on synthesizing viruses, lack of international cooperation, conspiracy theories promulgated by the CCP, EcoHealth Alliance, different kinds of "gain-of-function" research, virus hunting, the history of lab leaks, risk and reward in the search for knowledge, Anthony Fauci, and other topics.

Alina Chan, Ph.D., is a scientific advisor and viral vector engineer at the Broad Institute of MIT & Harvard. She is a recent Broad Ignite fellow and Human Frontier Science Program fellow with a background in medical genetics, synthetic biology, and genetic engineering. During the pandemic, Dr. Chan investigated problems relevant to finding the origin of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and co-authored Viral: The Search for the Origin of COVID-19 with Matt Ridley. In 2022, she joined the Pathogens Project Taskforce organized by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to generate new thinking on responsible high-risk pathogen research.

Website: harpercollins.com/blogs/authors/alina-chan

Twitter: @Ayjchan

[eretzyisrael]

[alaric-greyson]

So this is a Tory position so it’s obviously starting from an at least moderately BS position, but figured I’d give you the gist of the article.

On the Tsar thing:  that’s just a term both we and the brits use for “government official who has been put in charge of some wide-ranging project.”  In the states we just usually spell it Czar instead.  So you’ll see folks referred to as “climate czar” or “railroad czar” as a shorthand for “President Guy named Jane Official as the head of the multi-agency taskforce targeting a topic” So for the position this headline is talking about, social mobility is a big deal in the UK because as the original post said, UK class BS is pretty rancid (everything we hate about it in the US but also there’s a literal aristocracy!).  However if you’re trying to run on populist politics you can’t really tell your voters “I’ve got mine so screw you.”  The Tories are the party of rich conservatives though so that’s their historical default (though in a country that still has a lot of European social democracy as a baseline).

So the argument they’re making here is that “lack of social mobility is a problem and we want to fix it.”  But who do we target, and how much do we help is the debate.

So they’re framing it as a choice between two paths to social mobility.  I’ll use some American analogies to make it a bit more obvious for us Americans.

Path 1:  Maggie Citizen comes from a poor neighborhood in a Rust Belt city, and wins the genetic raffle, and gets the mix of smarts, looks, personality so she has every option open.  She gets a huge scholarship to Harvard, then goes to Yale Law, works for a big firm, leverages connections to enter politics, eventually becomes a Senator.

Path 2:  Maggie Citizen comes from a poor neighborhood in a Rust Belt city.  She works hard in school, goes to community college, gets a degree which allows her to get a job as a medical receptionist.  Maggie gets married to someone else in her new lower middle class status.  Their kids inherit their work ethic in school, and they get into four year universities where they major in business or medicine.  Now their kids are middle class to upper middle class.  Now those kids have the backgrounds and opportunities to really take advantage of that higher tier education, and maybe one of these kids can score admission to Harvard and unlock the connections to move into the upper class.

So the Tory argument is that Path 1 is really great!  We love Maggie Citizen, even if she’s not really from our class.  But Path 1 is only open to a tiny subset of people, and there are so many places for someone on Path 1 to fail and then never get the advantages (what if Maggie failed a class her senior year, or scored slightly lower on the SATs, etc).  Even if Maggie succeeds, it really only might benefit her immediate family. Path 2 though is much “safer”.  Isn’t it better to focus on making sure all the Maggies could have a chance to improve their social class the small amount.  Instead of focusing investment on college and top stuff, lets invest in small business and entrepreneurs who will give 100s of Maggies a chance to improve their lot.

Of course Path 2 isn’t guaranteed either.  And “coincidentally” it lets conservatives cut education and increase business spending while also not needing to worry about little Reginald losing “his” spot at Harvard to “some girl from Cleveland”.

So the argument has some logic behind it, but it’s built on the false premise that we can only support one of these Paths, and therefore should cut the path whose loss also benefits those currently in the upper classes.

Classism in the uk is rancid

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Maya Yang at The Guardian:

The Trump administration has said it is halting Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students and has ordered existing international students at the university to transfer or lose their legal status. On Thursday, the New York Times reported that the Trump administration notified Harvard about its decision following ongoing correspondence regarding the “legality of a sprawling records request”, according to three people familiar with the matter. The records request comes as part of an investigation by the homeland security department in which federal officials are threatening the university’s international student admissions. The homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, posted a copy of the letter on X, formerly known as Twitter. In it Noem said: “I am writing to inform you that effective immediately, Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification is revoked.” “The revocation of your Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification means that Harvard is prohibited from having any aliens on F- or J-nonimmigrant status for the 2025-2026 academic school year. This decertification also means that existing aliens on F- or J- nonimmigrant status must transfer to another university in order to maintain their nonimmigrant status,” Noem continued. Noem justified the decision by saying: “This action should not surprise you and is the unfortunate result of Harvard’s failure to comply with simple reporting requirements … Consequences must follow to send a clear signal to Harvard and all universities that want to enjoy the privilege of enrolling foreign students, that the Trump administration will enforce the law and root out the evils of anti-Americanism and antisemitism in society and campuses.” The former governor of South Dakota also accused Harvard of “fostering violence, antisemitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist party on its campus”. In a separate press release, the homeland security department said: “Secretary Noem is following through on her promise to protect students and prohibit terrorist sympathizers from receiving benefits from the US government.”

[...] The latest decision from the homeland security department comes amid growing tensions between federal officials and Harvard over the Trump administration’s claims that the university has implemented inadequate responses to antisemitism on its campus. The Trump administration terminated a further $450m in grants to the university in May, following an earlier cancellation of $2.2bn in federal funding. A Trump-appointed antisemitism taskforce has pointed to “just how radical Harvard has become” as nationwide anti-war protesters – including students – demonstrated against Israel’s deadly onslaught on Gaza, which has killed at least 53,000 Palestinians in the last year and a half. The Trump administration has also ordered the university to dismantle its diversity, equity and inclusion programming, restrict student protests and disclose admission details to federal officials.

ICE Barbie Kristi Noem can go straight to hell for halting Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, effective next school year.

This move is an attack on academic freedom.

See Also:

Robert Reich: Trump's Biggest "Fuck You" Yet to Higher Education and the Rest of the World

AP, via HuffPost: Trump Administration Bars Harvard From Enrolling Foreign Students

[techcrunchappcom]

New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/us-surpasses-three-million-coronavirus-cases/

US surpasses three million coronavirus cases

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption California and Texas each reported more than 10,000 new daily cases on Tuesday

More than three million people in the US have now tested positive for Covid-19, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Over 131,000 deaths have been reported, and on Tuesday the US broke its record for most new cases reported in one day.

Despite the rise, the White House wants to press forward on some reopenings, including for schools.

US Vice-President Mike Pence, who leads the White House Coronavirus Taskforce, argued rules should not be “too tough”.

Cases were flattening out, he said, while President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that America was “in a good place” regarding the pandemic.

Over 60,000 new cases were reported Tuesday, shattering the previous highest tally of 55,220 new cases on 2 July.

The latest figures came as the states of California and Texas each reported more than 10,000 new daily cases.

Dr Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease expert and adviser to the White House on the coronavirus, said the country was still “knee-deep” in only its first coronavirus wave.

White House pushes schools to reopen

Speaking to reporters at the US Department of Education on Wednesday, Mr Pence defended the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic.

“While we mourn with those who mourn, because of what the American people have done, because of the extraordinary work of our healthcare workers around the country, we are encouraged that the average fatality rate continues to be low and steady,” he said after lowering his face mask.

Image copyright Getty Images

Image caption Mr Pence speaks alongside health and education officials

He added that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will issue new guidelines on reopening schools after Mr Trump criticised a plan put forward by the expert body as “very tough and expensive” and threatened to cut off funding to schools that don’t open in the autumn.

“The president said today we just don’t want the guidance to be too tough,” Mr Pence said. “That’s the reason why, next week, CDC is going to be issuing a new set of tools, five different documents that will be giving even more clarity on the guidance going forward.”

Schools in the US normally begin for the year in either August or early September.

The CDC’s guidelines suggest pupils and staff all wear face coverings and stay at home if necessary. They also suggest schools should implement staggered timetables and socially distanced seating arrangements, and close communal spaces.

Spike in Tulsa after Trump rally

In Oklahoma, health officials in the city of Tulsa said President Trump’s campaign rally there last month and the protests that took place at the same time “likely contributed” to a spike in cases locally, the Associated Press reported.

“In the past few days, we’ve seen almost 500 new cases, and we had several large events just over two weeks ago, so I guess we just connect the dots,” Tulsa City-County Health Department Director Dr Bruce Dart said. The Trump campaign has not yet commented.

Meanwhile, two prestigious universities in the US are taking legal action against the government over an immigration rule they say will force international students to leave the country.

Under the rule, introduced by the Trump administration, foreign students would be barred from staying in the country if their colleges don’t hold in-person classes this autumn. Much university teaching is shifting online during the pandemic.

Elite universities sue over US visa ruling

Texas set to resume executions amid pandemic

Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – two of the highest-ranking universities in the world – have now asked a federal court to block the rule.

Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said in an email to the Harvard community: “We will pursue this case vigorously so that our international students – and international students at institutions across the country – can continue their studies without the threat of deportation.”

In other US virus-related news:

United Airlines warned that unless flights dramatically increase, the company would have to lay off nearly half of its workers – totalling some 36,000 employees

Houston’s Democratic mayor blocked the Texas Republican Party from holding its state convention in person, citing public safety concerns due to sharply rising virus cases

Ivy League colleges paused all sports until January, ending hopes that American Football games scheduled for autumn would go ahead

[lauramalchowblog]

Patient Controlled Health Data: Balancing Regulated Protections with Patient Autonomy

By KENNETH D. MANDL, MD, MPH, DAN GOTTLIEB, MPA, and JOSHUA MANDEL, MD

A patient can, under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), request a copy of her medical records in a “form and format” of her choice “if it is readily producible.” However, patient advocates have long complained about a process which is onerous, inefficient, at times expensive, and almost always on paper. The patient-driven healthcare movement advocates for turnkey electronic provisioning of medical record data to improve care and accelerate cures.

There is recent progress. The 21st Century Cures Act requires that certified health information technology provide access to all data elements of a patient’s record, via published digital connection points, known as application programming interfaces (APIs), that enable healthcare information “to be accessed, exchanged, and used without special effort.”  The Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) has proposed a rule that will facilitate a standard way for any patient to connect an app of her choice to her provider’s electronic health record (EHR).  With these easily added or deleted (“substitutable”) apps, she should be able to obtain a copy of her data, share it with health care providers and apps that help her make decisions and navigate her care journeys, or contribute data to research. Because the rule mandates the ”SMART on FHIR” API (an open standard for launching apps now part of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources ANSI Standard), these apps will run anywhere in the health system.

Apple recently advanced an apps-based information economy, by connecting its native “Health app” via SMART on FHIR, to hundreds of health systems, so patients can download copies of their data to their iPhones. The impending rule will no doubt spark the development of a substantial number of additional apps.

Policymakers are grappling with concerns that data crossing the API and leaving a HIPAA covered entity are no longer governed by HIPAA. Instead, consumer apps and the data therein fall under oversight of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). When a patient obtains her data via an app, she will likely have agreed to the terms and the privacy policy for that app, or at least clicked through an agreement no matter how lengthy or opaque the language.  For commercial apps in particular, these are often poorly protective. As with consumer behavior in the non-healthcare apps and services marketplace, we expect that many patients will broadly share their data with apps, unwittingly giving up control over the uses of those data by third parties.

Some patients may wish to explore the nascent emerging marketplace offering options to monetize their data. “Information altruists” and self-assembling patient groups will donate data to speed social and direct benefit through innovation and research. Notably, the monetary value of an individual record is generally low, with exceptions for patients having rare or complex conditions and histories.

How do we support a patient’s autonomy to use tools of her choice to improve her health and contribute to research, provide her with options to share in the monetary value from downstream uses of her data, while also protecting her from predatory practices?

HIPAA does not adequately address the issue. While it does allow an app developer to become a business associate of a covered entity (such as a provider or healthcare institution) this arrangement only applies when an app is managing health information on behalf of the covered entity — whereas in a consumer-centric ecosystem, many apps will choose to have a relationship with a consumer directly.  Importantly, the covered entity itself may be a conflicted party when the patient wishes to use an app that either (1) shares data with a competing health care provider or (2) competes with the functionality of the entity’s EHR. These conflicts could limit data flow across institutions, and raise the barrier to entry for new, innovative apps.

Further, the HIPAA business associate framework does not prevent commercial use of patient’s data without consent. Patient data in de-identified format are already shared widely in healthcare on hundreds of millions of patients, generally in ways that are opaque and not reported to the patients whose data have oft times been aggregated sold, and used for profit, and sometimes in ways that enable downstream re-identification.

A federal taskforce recognized that enabling patient autonomy to share data comes with inherent risk, and largely left these trade-offs in the patient’s hands. We propose strengthening the federal role in protecting health data under patient-mediated data exchange, while maintaining patient choice.

Require the EHR, upon exposing data across the API to a patient, to provide a standardized summary, at a sixth-grade reading level, of an app’s privacy policy and terms of service, highlighting risks for consumers (such as the ONC model privacy notice), and summarizing with an indication of whether they meet some specific bar (such as the CARIN code of conduct or a professional society or patient organization endorsement).

Establish best practices and federal standards for privacy policies and terms and conditions, relying on user-centered design as in large-scale federally funded research studies. Consider multimedia and semi-structured questionnaires (quizzes) to promote and confirm comprehension. Methods used to de-identify or aggregate data and their re-identification risk should be transparent, as should be intentions to commercialize the data.

Define a robust auditing process with oversight authority by either the Department of Health and Human Office for Civil Rights (OCR) or the FTC regardless of how the data are obtained.

Define penalties for violation of the terms of service and demonstrate strong and public federal enforcement.

Develop a consumer hotline and website for complaints to the OCR or the FTC, and publicize those complaints.

Introduce legislation to protect patients from predatory uses of their health data. Consider as model the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, which prevents discrimination on the basis of genetic information in both health insurance and employment.

There are promising approaches available to protect a patient’s health data without limiting choice or creating a bottleneck to innovation by new and smaller entrants into the Health IT ecosystem. Now is the time to consider these carefully.

Kenneth D. Mandl, MD, MPH is director of the Computational Health Informatics Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Donald A.B. Lindberg Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School.

Dan Gottlieb, MPA is a clinical informaticist and software consultant working with the Harvard Medical School Department of Biomedical Informatics and Boston Children’s Hospital Computational Health Informatics Program on tools to empower patients and researchers.

Joshua C. Mandel, MD is a physician and software developer working to fuel an ecosystem of health apps with access to clinical and research data.

Patient Controlled Health Data: Balancing Regulated Protections with Patient Autonomy published first on https://venabeahan.tumblr.com

[kristinsimmons]

Patient Controlled Health Data: Balancing Regulated Protections with Patient Autonomy

By KENNETH D. MANDL, MD, MPH, DAN GOTTLIEB, MPA, and JOSHUA MANDEL, MD

A patient can, under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), request a copy of her medical records in a “form and format” of her choice “if it is readily producible.” However, patient advocates have long complained about a process which is onerous, inefficient, at times expensive, and almost always on paper. The patient-driven healthcare movement advocates for turnkey electronic provisioning of medical record data to improve care and accelerate cures.

There is recent progress. The 21st Century Cures Act requires that certified health information technology provide access to all data elements of a patient’s record, via published digital connection points, known as application programming interfaces (APIs), that enable healthcare information “to be accessed, exchanged, and used without special effort.”  The Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) has proposed a rule that will facilitate a standard way for any patient to connect an app of her choice to her provider’s electronic health record (EHR).  With these easily added or deleted (“substitutable”) apps, she should be able to obtain a copy of her data, share it with health care providers and apps that help her make decisions and navigate her care journeys, or contribute data to research. Because the rule mandates the ”SMART on FHIR” API (an open standard for launching apps now part of the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources ANSI Standard), these apps will run anywhere in the health system.

Apple recently advanced an apps-based information economy, by connecting its native “Health app” via SMART on FHIR, to hundreds of health systems, so patients can download copies of their data to their iPhones. The impending rule will no doubt spark the development of a substantial number of additional apps.

Policymakers are grappling with concerns that data crossing the API and leaving a HIPAA covered entity are no longer governed by HIPAA. Instead, consumer apps and the data therein fall under oversight of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). When a patient obtains her data via an app, she will likely have agreed to the terms and the privacy policy for that app, or at least clicked through an agreement no matter how lengthy or opaque the language.  For commercial apps in particular, these are often poorly protective. As with consumer behavior in the non-healthcare apps and services marketplace, we expect that many patients will broadly share their data with apps, unwittingly giving up control over the uses of those data by third parties.

Some patients may wish to explore the nascent emerging marketplace offering options to monetize their data. “Information altruists” and self-assembling patient groups will donate data to speed social and direct benefit through innovation and research. Notably, the monetary value of an individual record is generally low, with exceptions for patients having rare or complex conditions and histories.

How do we support a patient’s autonomy to use tools of her choice to improve her health and contribute to research, provide her with options to share in the monetary value from downstream uses of her data, while also protecting her from predatory practices?

HIPAA does not adequately address the issue. While it does allow an app developer to become a business associate of a covered entity (such as a provider or healthcare institution) this arrangement only applies when an app is managing health information on behalf of the covered entity — whereas in a consumer-centric ecosystem, many apps will choose to have a relationship with a consumer directly.  Importantly, the covered entity itself may be a conflicted party when the patient wishes to use an app that either (1) shares data with a competing health care provider or (2) competes with the functionality of the entity’s EHR. These conflicts could limit data flow across institutions, and raise the barrier to entry for new, innovative apps.

Further, the HIPAA business associate framework does not prevent commercial use of patient’s data without consent. Patient data in de-identified format are already shared widely in healthcare on hundreds of millions of patients, generally in ways that are opaque and not reported to the patients whose data have oft times been aggregated sold, and used for profit, and sometimes in ways that enable downstream re-identification.

A federal taskforce recognized that enabling patient autonomy to share data comes with inherent risk, and largely left these trade-offs in the patient’s hands. We propose strengthening the federal role in protecting health data under patient-mediated data exchange, while maintaining patient choice.

Require the EHR, upon exposing data across the API to a patient, to provide a standardized summary, at a sixth-grade reading level, of an app’s privacy policy and terms of service, highlighting risks for consumers (such as the ONC model privacy notice), and summarizing with an indication of whether they meet some specific bar (such as the CARIN code of conduct or a professional society or patient organization endorsement).

Establish best practices and federal standards for privacy policies and terms and conditions, relying on user-centered design as in large-scale federally funded research studies. Consider multimedia and semi-structured questionnaires (quizzes) to promote and confirm comprehension. Methods used to de-identify or aggregate data and their re-identification risk should be transparent, as should be intentions to commercialize the data.

Define a robust auditing process with oversight authority by either the Department of Health and Human Office for Civil Rights (OCR) or the FTC regardless of how the data are obtained.

Define penalties for violation of the terms of service and demonstrate strong and public federal enforcement.

Develop a consumer hotline and website for complaints to the OCR or the FTC, and publicize those complaints.

Introduce legislation to protect patients from predatory uses of their health data. Consider as model the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008, which prevents discrimination on the basis of genetic information in both health insurance and employment.

There are promising approaches available to protect a patient’s health data without limiting choice or creating a bottleneck to innovation by new and smaller entrants into the Health IT ecosystem. Now is the time to consider these carefully.

Kenneth D. Mandl, MD, MPH is director of the Computational Health Informatics Program at Boston Children’s Hospital and the Donald A.B. Lindberg Professor of Pediatrics and Professor of Biomedical Informatics at Harvard Medical School.

Dan Gottlieb, MPA is a clinical informaticist and software consultant working with the Harvard Medical School Department of Biomedical Informatics and Boston Children’s Hospital Computational Health Informatics Program on tools to empower patients and researchers.

Joshua C. Mandel, MD is a physician and software developer working to fuel an ecosystem of health apps with access to clinical and research data.

Patient Controlled Health Data: Balancing Regulated Protections with Patient Autonomy published first on https://wittooth.tumblr.com/