Emergency review letter

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH & HUMAN SERVICES

Public Health Service
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
National Center for Health Statistics
3311Toledo Road
Hyattsville, Maryland 20782

May 13, 2020
Dominic Mancini
Deputy Director
Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs
Office of Management and Budget
Washington, DC
Subject: Request for Emergency Review and Clearance
Dear Mr. Mancini:
Pursuant to Office of Management and Budget (OMB) procedures established at 5 CFR Part 1320, Controlling
Paperwork Burdens on the Public, I request that the proposed information collection project, “The National
Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) Research and Development Survey (RANDS) during COVID-19” be
processed in accordance with section 1320.13, Emergency Processing. I have determined that this information
must be collected prior to the expiration of time periods established under Part 1320, and that this information
is essential to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) emergency response to the outbreak of
a novel coronavirus.
As of May 13, 2020, the pandemic caused by a novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) has resulted in more than
1,342,000 confirmed human infections and more than 80,000 deaths in the United States. However much
remains unknown about the pandemic’s impact Americans’ access to health care during this pandemic, and a
scarcity of information regarding potential sources of measurement error when asking respondents about
Coronavirus-related topics. In the first case, RANDS during COVID-19 will permit NCHS to release
experimental estimates about topics such as telemedicine access and use, forgone care during the pandemic,
and access to COVID-19-specific care in a timely manner that is not possible from other Federal information
collections. Secondly, RANDS during COVID-19 will provide some of the first data on the construct validity
and potential sources of measurement error for Coronavirus-related survey questions.
CDC cannot reasonably comply with the normal clearance given the urgent necessity to collect and
disseminate health care access and measurement error-related data in a timely manner. Therefore, CDC
requests a 180-day emergency clearance to launch this pair of general population surveys to obtain these data.
The research aspects of RANDS would normally have been conducted under a generic clearance, so no
additional public comment would have been required anyway. Please provide an approval/disapproval
determination of this request to collect information under an emergency clearance by close of business on May
14, 2020.
Sincerely,
signed by
Jennifer H. Digitally
Jennifer H. Madans -S
2020.05.13
Madans -S Date:
15:16:09 -04'00'

Jennifer H. Madans, PhD
Acting Deputy Director
National Center for Health Statistics
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention