26:4-132 Findings, declarations relative to Statewide automated and electronic immunization registry.

2. The Legislature finds and declares that the establishment of a Statewide automated and electronic immunization registry will serve the following public health purposes:

a. ensure the greatest possible protection to the public from morbidity and death related to infectious diseases preventable by appropriate and timely immunizations;

b. establish the public health infrastructure necessary:

(1) to assist individuals and families to maximize their personal protection from vaccine-preventable diseases in as efficient and efficacious a manner as possible;

(2) for community-wide and population-specific surveillance of potential susceptibility to outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases; and

(3) for an effective response to a bio-terrorism event utilizing a potentially vaccine-preventable disease organism or to an epidemic or pandemic outbreak of a novel influenza virus of unusual virulence;

c. ensure that a registrant, or the registrant's parent or legal guardian if the registrant is a minor, can more easily obtain from his health care provider or local health authority, or by other means as determined by the Commissioner of Health and Senior Services, the registrant's full immunization history if the registrant changes health care providers or requires documentation of immunization;

d. provide health care providers, licensed child care centers, schools, colleges, and other public agencies and private organizations authorized to access the immunization registry with information concerning immunizations and other preventive health screenings, and the ability to determine relevant immunization and other preventive health screening histories of the individuals whom they serve;

e. provide the State with greatly improved accuracy in its records concerning immunization rates among the State's residents;

f. improve the State's ability to respond to outbreaks of communicable and vaccine-preventable diseases in a manner that reduces the risk of unnecessary additional immunizations;

g. enable the efficient allocation of public health resources to provide the widest possible protection of the general population from vaccine-preventable diseases;

h. ensure that all vulnerable children can be brought to completed immunization status as quickly as possible following manufacturing or distribution delays that may occur; and

i. establish the legal and administrative framework necessary to ensure a properly functioning, universal, Statewide immunization registry inclusive of both public and private partners working cooperatively to share immunization data in a timely manner.

L.2004,c.138,s.2.