The Public Health Law Center is currently working with the Great Lakes Inter-Tribal Epidemiology Center (GLITEC) on its needs for real-time, granular public health data. GLITEC needs access to case data about Tribal members to conduct public health surveillance, investigate disease outbreaks, and inform community health programming.
Since 1996, GLITEC has served the 34 federally-recognized Tribes, four urban Indian communities, and three Indian Health Service (IHS) service units within the Bemidji Indian Health Services Area—Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Chicago, Illinois—in their efforts to improve the health of their peoples. Part of their mission is to assist Tribes with data needs through partnership development, community-based research, education, and technical assistance.
The Problem
Health information is protected by a complex web of federal, state and local laws, and data sharing between public health partners must comply with these laws. In 2025, as the GLITEC team negotiated with states to access Tribal member data, barriers arose that hindered data access and undermined Tribal sovereignty.
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Some states would only release aggregated data to a Tribal epidemiology center, but aggregated data makes it difficult to conduct case investigations or provide targeted public health interventions. State and local health departments are very careful about releasing line-level data (individual cases or patients) because of privacy and confidentiality concerns.
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State health departments think in terms of state and county boundaries while Tribal Epidemiology Centers (TECs) work regionally, with data from different states, increasing the complexity of gathering and sharing public health data.
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Some states want to charge TECs for aggregating the data, which is a service that many TECs do not need and have the capability to do in-house.
GLITEC leadership wanted to understand the legal and policy framework that gives Tribes and TECs authority over their public health data in both state and federal law to engage in informed and productive conversations with state and local health departments.
Finding Solutions
The Public Health Law Center (PHLC) conducted legal and policy research to summarize relevant federal and state laws for GLITEC . The team prepared a memo on the general legal authorities that support tribal sovereignty and tribal data sovereignty. In addition, PHLC’s attorneys prepared state-specific memos on the laws of two different states that GLITEC works with regularly. The PHLC team also reviewed existing data sharing agreements and provided general recommendations on how to clarify the data use cases that the agreements covered. Once the research was completed, PHLC’s attorneys met with GLITEC leadership to review the research and answer follow-up questions.
After receiving the support from the Public Health Law Center, GLITEC Director, Will Funmaker stated: “The support we received was very helpful in getting us relevant points to bring up to [our state partners] in our negotiations for Data Use Agreements with each state.”
Public Health Law Center and GLITEC have partnered on several projects together over the years, and the team at the Center is honored to continue supporting GLITEC in its critical mission of improving the health and well-being of Tribal communities.