Federal datasets began disappearing from public view on January 31, 2025, in response to executive orders from President Donald Trump. Among those were the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Risk Behaviour Survey, which asks respondents about their gender identity and sexual orientation and tracks behaviours like smoking and drug use; CDC’s HIV dataset; and CDC and Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease registry’s Environmental Justice Index, which tracks pollution in communities, and Social Vulnerability Index, which identifies communities at high risk for disease and disability.
The collection of public health surveillance data has never been politically neutral. It has always reflected ideas about individual rights. With our colleagues James Colgrove and Daniel Wolfe, we have written about the