Title 42 › CHAPTER 6A — PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE › SUBCHAPTER IX — GENETIC DISEASES, HEMOPHILIA PROGRAMS, AND SUDDEN INFANT DEATH SYNDROME › Part A — Genetic Diseases › § 300b–10
Create an Advisory Committee on Heritable Disorders in Newborns and Children to advise the Secretary of Health. The committee must give advice on grants and programs, help set policies for newborn screening, and make evidence-based recommendations about which inherited disorders all newborns should be screened for, including conditions found as side results of lab tests. It must help people and groups nominate conditions for the screening panel, prepare to review nominations in advance, and build a decision tool that weighs public health impact and cost to guide updates to the screening panel. The committee must also consider how to help every State gain the ability to screen for these disorders and give recommendations to reduce death and illness. Those recommendations can cover follow-up care, screening and treatment systems, testing technology, reporting for conditions without treatments, treatable conditions not yet on the panel, program standards, quality checks, public and provider education, costs and effectiveness, causes and risk factors, data sharing and surveillance, and the speed of specimen collection and testing. The Secretary must appoint up to 15 members, with an odd total number. Required members include the heads of HRSA, CDC, NIH, AHRQ, and FDA, plus medical and scientific experts, ethics and infectious disease experts, public members, and other needed representatives. The Secretary must accept or reject any committee recommendation within 120 days, and must make that decision and the reasons public; if unable to decide in 120 days, the Secretary must tell the committee and Congress and explain the delay and next steps. The committee must vote on a nominated condition within 9 months after it sends the condition to a review workgroup. Not later than 3 years after April 24, 2008, and every fiscal year after that, the committee must publish and share a report on peer-reviewed newborn screening guidelines, send it to Congress, the Secretary, the interagency committee, and State health departments, and post it widely online. The committee must meet at least four times a year. It will continue to operate through the end of fiscal year 2019, and if not renewed by law then, it may be treated as a presidential or federal advisory committee under existing law.
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The Public Health and Welfare, Source: USLM XML via OLRC
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42 U.S.C. § 300b–10
Title 42, The Public Health and Welfare
Last Updated
Sep 23, 2026
Release point: 119-110