Public release of health data typically requires statistical disclosure limitation (SDL), but scant research demonstrates how real-world SDL affects data usability. Recent changes of federal data re-release policy allow a pseudo-counterfactual comparison of HIV and syphilis data suppression rules.
Methods
Incident counts (2019) of HIV and syphilis infections by county for Black and White populations were downloaded from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. We quantified and compared suppression status by disease and county between Black and White populations and calculated incident rate ratios for counties with statistically reliable counts.
Results
Approximately 50% of US counties have incident HIV counts suppressed for Black and White populations compared with only 5% for syphilis, which has an alternative suppression strategy. The county population sizes protected by a numerator disclosure rule (