​CHICAGO, July 10, 2019 — Peter Meyer, a nationally recognized expert in data confidentiality and security, has been named a senior fellow in Health Care Programs at NORC at the University of Chicago.

While at NORC, Meyer will be supporting the Office of Management and Budget as they develop guidelines for privacy and security of federal data related to the Evidence-Based Policymaking Act of 2018, which is designed to strengthen privacy protections, expand access to secure data, and improve the government's ability to generate and use evidence in creating policies.

"Peter Meyer has shown a strong commitment to strengthening systems to protect data privacy, which lies at the core of our mission," said Michael Davern, executive vice president of Research. "At the same time, he has devoted much of his career to making federal health care data more accessible to the research community, enabling new insights and effective policymaking."

Most recently, Meyer was director of the Research Data Center (RDC), which was developed by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) to allow researchers access to restricted data. In that role, he was successful in cutting in half the time it took for researchers to gain approval for proposals. He also increased the number of RDCs from one to 15 by expanding the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) network to two locations, and by contracting with the Census Bureau to open new centers at research universities across the country.

"Maintaining the privacy and security of data is imperative in today's quickly evolving digital landscape, as is making sure that important data are available to those who can use them to develop transformative policies," Meyer said. "I look forward to working with my colleagues at NORC to continue developing ways to protect and responsibly share vital information."