All Kids Count II grant recipients. Receiving this grant support means SIIS is one of the best registries in the country. Minnesota has also developed statewide standards to ensure that parents' rights and individual privacy are not violated. Currently, few refuse. Stable core dollars are desperately needed for local public health to continue managing these collaborative registries.
Many registries are at risk of losing the progress they've made to date due to inadequate funding.
For example, one study estimated that a registry could identify a child's immunization status at one-fourth the cost of manually pulling the record. Currently there is no dedicated Federal or state funding for immunization registries. The Minnesota Department of Health is working with the Department of Human Services, private health plans, local public health, and others in both the public and private sector on a reasonable cost sharing proposal. During the early stages of registry development in Minnesota, questions were raised by some legislators about data privacy issues. The concerns about confidentiality, limited access by authorized persons, and the rights of parents to refuse participation in registries have been addressed.