When flu season came to Arkansas, one of our recent symptoms was wondering where the “public” is when it comes to public health.
The Arkansas Department of Health is the 5,000-employee agency charged with protecting and improving the health and well-being of Arkansans.
When the flu is spreading across the state - or when another communicable disease fl ares up - they are the ones responsible for gauging severity and identifying ways the public can react to keep themselves safe.
But it doesn’t always seem the public health agency is being all that public, to the frustration of Arkansans who want to know what’s going on.
Take for example our current outbreak of flu. It’s caused 18 deaths in the state as of Tuesday, according to Ann Russell, director of communications for the Health Department.
A recent story about the fl u quoted the statewide number, but also indicated Health Department officials in Benton and Washington counties said they didn’t know whether any of those deaths were local.
Then Russell, based at the agency’s mother ship in Little Rock, likewise declined to tell readers where those deaths were within Arkansas.
Our thought: People want to know where these deaths are occurring with a little more specificity than just “Arkansas.”
Russell, in a follow-up conversation, said she’s familiar with the questions about how tight-lipped the agency can sometimes seem. People often ask why the agency can’t identify a county or a town where such tragic deaths occur.
The basic answer? Lawyers.
Attorneys for the Health Department place serious restrictions on the public release of information out of concern for complying with laws such as the federal law known as HIPPA. Those laws seek to prevent the sharing of medical information about an individual without that person’s permission. The agency, and its lawyers, are cautious in the interest of patient privacy.
Russell said there’s also a very practical reason information about the flu is not very detailed: It doesn’t matter.
“With the flu, it’s everywhere,” Russell said. “I truly understand the public’s desire to know, but in the cases we’re talking about, it doesn’t really matter because the risk is the same.”
Whether one is in a community where a death or deaths have occurred or someplace where tragedy hasn’t struck, the same actions are recommended: get a flu shot, cover mouths when sneezing or coughing, wash hands frequently, stay home when sick.
Russell said more detailed information would be released if it would help. For example, a woman in southeast Arkansas contracted measles and visited multiple restaurants. The agency identified the gender and the places she had visited so that anyone who had been to those places could seek help and be aware of what was going on.
“If there’s a public health risk, we’re going to do it without blinking an eye,” Russell said.
It’s important that Arkansans believe their public health agency is being open with them about communicable diseases. The lawyers’ approach is attempting to balance between public knowledge and privacy. We respect the need for that.
Russell noted some states are more liberal about sharing information, such as county-level details. It’s just a matter of interpretation of the law.
We think county-level information would be helpful and, to some extent, comforting to Arkansans who want to evaluate the situation for themselves. When they’re telling us it’s the worst flu season in years, the public would prefer an accounting of what’s happening.
Opinion, Pages 5 on 01/23/2013