Childhood lead poisoning: prevention.

Existing law, the Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Act of 1991, requires the State Department of Public Health to adopt regulations establishing a standard of care at least as stringent as the most recent United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention screening guidelines, whereby all children are evaluated for risk of lead poisoning by health care providers during each child's periodic health assessment. Existing law requires the standard of care for a child who is determined to be "at risk" for lead poisoning to include the screening of that child. Existing regulations require every health care provider who performs a periodic health assessment of a child to order a child who receives services from a publicly funded program for low-income children to be screened for lead poisoning. This bill would require the department to coordinate with specified state entities to gather data to determine whether low-income children are being screened for lead poisoning as required by the regulation described above. The bill would also require all uses and disclosures of the gathered or shared data to comply with all applicable state and federal laws for the protection of the privacy and security of data. Existing law requires a laboratory that performs a blood lead analysis on a specimen of human blood drawn in California to report specified information to the department for each analysis on every person tested. Existing law requires that all information reported be confidential, except that the department is authorized to share the information for the purpose of surveillance, case management, investigation, environmental assessment, environmental remediation, or abatement with the local health department, environmental health agency, or building department, so long as the entity receiving the information otherwise maintains the confidentiality of the information, as specified. This bill would add the State Department of Health Care Services to the above-described list of entities with which the State Department of Public Health is authorized to share the reported information, for official governmental program purposes.