PRIVACY ISSUES

Even though de-identified, these data deal with individual-level information about health, and are therefore extremely sensitive. Population Data BC acts as the custodian of, and access point for, the various data holdings which remain under the stewardship of the agency that originally collected them. Population Data BC does not itself grant researchers access to the data. Instead, each agency with data stored at Population Data BC appoints a designated Data Steward, who must approve any request to use the data.

The BC Ministry of Health Services, the BC Privacy Commissioner and Population Data BC have developed a data access model that balances privacy concerns with the requirements of research projects that advance public wellbeing.

Read more about data privacy and security at Population Data BC.

The access policy conforms with the BC Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, which outlines conditions that a public body must meet before disclosing personal information for research purposes:

• the research cannot be reasonably accomplished without that information
• any disclosure is not harmful to the individuals that the information is about
• the research benefits are clearly in the public interest
• the public body has approved conditions relating to such things as security and confidentiality and the removal of individual identifiers.

Many research requests do not require the inclusion of any personal information. Population Data BC's access policies and Data Access Request (DAR) have been developed to determine if personal information is required, and where possible, provide alternatives to obtain the necessary information in a non-personally identifiable form.

< back to completing the DAR