§280e–5 Voluntary Registry for Firefighter Cancer Incidence

Summary

The Secretary of Health and Human Services must, through the CDC director and with other agencies as needed, create and run a voluntary database called the Firefighter Registry. The database will collect health and job information from volunteer, paid-on-call, and career firefighters to study how often firefighters get cancer. It will include basic facts (like age and job status), years on the job, risk factors and medical history, estimates or counts of fire incidents attended and their types, and cancer diagnosis and treatment details. The system may link with State cancer registries to get dates of diagnosis and pathological information. The registry’s main uses are to improve data collection and to study cancer patterns and trends among firefighters. The Secretary must make a written plan, with input from experts and firefighter groups, for how to coordinate, store, and share the data, how to increase participation (including among minorities, women, and volunteers), and how to estimate fire incident counts when needed. That plan must be sent to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions within 30 days after it is finished. The Secretary must also report to those committees on progress and needed improvements, make data and analyses available to researchers and fire organizations as appropriate, and protect personal privacy under Federal and State law. Authorized funding is $5,500,000 for each of fiscal years 2024 through 2028. Definitions: Secretary — the HHS Secretary acting through the CDC Director. Firefighter Registry — the voluntary database of firefighter health and job information used to study cancer incidence.