Public-Health Exchange Board Steward — Outbreak Intelligence

The mandate

The consortium’s standing question is what outbreak information jurisdictions should exchange rapidly, under which evidence and safeguards, when local collection methods and legal authorities differ. Current agreements list datasets but do not adequately govern correction, denominator change, small-community re-identification or use beyond the declared response. Directors fear both delayed detection and central accumulation that weakens member trust.

The steward will reserve two days each month for chair preparation, jurisdiction challenge and review of exchange or investment papers, and attend six scheduled committee meetings. During a declared event, an initial written view on a material exchange question is expected within twelve hours, capped at four additional hours monthly. Operational epidemiology or incident command requires separate authority.

The appointment runs twelve months from January 2027. At month ten, member directors will assess whether governance principles survived at least one exercise or live event. A subsequent term requires consortium-board approval, a restated standing question and renewed disclosure; management cannot extend the appointment or turn unused advisory time into embedded programme work.

The steward has no line authority, executive responsibility, public-health command, clinical judgement, legal opinion, data-controller role or release approval. Advice frames risks and evidence but does not compel a jurisdiction to contribute or use data. Member officials retain statutory and operational decisions, and the role cannot be represented as federal or independent scientific endorsement.

No more than two other major appointments may run concurrently. The adviser must disclose work for health agencies, diagnostics firms, data platforms, pharmaceutical companies, academic centres and community-data organisations. Access to another jurisdiction’s confidential outbreak position or remuneration from a supplier under selection can create a conflict requiring recusal or termination.

Why the board wants this voice

The board combines excellent epidemiology, public administration and privacy expertise but lacks an operator who has sustained multi-jurisdiction exchange through changing event definitions and political pressure. Technical teams focus on interoperability and officials on authority, leaving community trust and correction behaviour underexamined. Directors want challenge that helps them move quickly without erasing legitimate local accountability.

What you will own

• Press members to tie each exchanged element to a detection, allocation, communication or coordination decision and a proportionate retention need.
• Test agreements for case definition, denominator, effective time, correction, missingness, provenance, permitted use and jurisdictional withdrawal.
• Challenge aggregate privacy claims where small populations, location, rare condition or external information preserve plausible re-identification.
• Shape emergency thresholds for expedited exchange, delayed verification, qualified confidence and later correction without normalising exceptional access.
• Probe accountability when federal, state, laboratory, healthcare and academic participants derive different conclusions from shared evidence.
• Frame exercises involving changed case definition, false cluster, laboratory backlog, cross-border movement and community objection to secondary use.
• Coach directors to record dissent, statutory constraint and residual uncertainty while preserving timely public-health action.

Candidate qualifications

• Governed public-health, clinical or laboratory data exchange across multiple jurisdictions with different statutory authority.
• Led outbreak information decisions where timeliness, changing definitions, missing denominators and community harm could not all be optimised.
• Designed correction and provenance practices that allowed recipients to revise conclusions after source or case-definition change.
• Addressed small-population re-identification and group harm beyond conventional removal of direct identifiers.
• Advised public or nonprofit boards while preserving jurisdictional command, clinical authority and independent scientific judgement.
• Managed conflicts across health agencies, diagnostics, technology suppliers, academia, communities and life-sciences sponsors.

Non-negotiables

• Able to attend six Washington meetings in person and meet the declared-event response window despite remote regular delivery.
• Will disclose agency, academic, diagnostics, pharmaceutical, platform and community-data relationships before receiving sensitive evidence.
• Accepts that release, clinical, statutory and incident decisions remain with authorised jurisdictional officials.
• Must bring live multi-jurisdiction health exchange experience; general interoperability policy work alone is insufficient.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe an outbreak-data correction that changed a jurisdiction’s conclusion and how recipients were made aware.
2. 49 words maximum. Which current agency, diagnostics, academic or platform relationships require disclosure to this consortium?
3. 49 words maximum. How would you govern rapid exchange when one jurisdiction uses a materially different case definition?