Since the DOSE Study involves daily participation at your place of employment during your normal work hours, it is completely understandable that you may feel concerned about your privacy.  Such concerns may include questions about the confidentiality of your exposure information, any personal information collected, or your employer’s involvement.  As a result of this, the study team at Yale has taken numerous steps in order to safeguard all sensitive information collected.  A summary of these steps is provided here.

Key Privacy Points:

• Any identifiable health information that is obtained in connection with this study will remain confidential and will be disclosed only with your permission or as required by U.S. or State law. 

• Your information will be placed in an anonymous data set with a scrambled identifier on a computer that is password protected and accessible only to the Yale study team.  

• When the results of the research are published or discussed at conferences, no information will be included that would reveal your identity unless your specific consent for this activity is obtained. 
• All exposure information that will be accessible to your employer will only be available in

  aggregate form, or labeled by the unique identifier that only the study team has access to.  As a result, in the event of an overexposure, it will only be the  Yale study team that is aware of the information, and it will only be a member of the Yale study team that approaches an employee to discuss the exposure if discussion is needed.  Any attempts by persons outside of the Yale study team to elicit or discuss and individual’s exposure data should immediately be reported to the study coordinator, Sharon, for investigation.

• Representatives from the Yale Human Investigation Committee (the committee that reviews, approves, and monitors research on human subjects) may inspect study records during internal auditing procedures. Authorized representatives from the Centers for Disease Control/National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health may also review the study records. However, these individuals are required to keep all information confidential.