Report 2022-102 Recommendations
When an audit is completed and a report is issued, auditees must provide the State Auditor with information regarding their progress in implementing recommendations from our reports at three intervals from the release of the report: 60 days, six months, and one year. Additionally, Senate Bill 1452 (Chapter 452, Statutes of 2006), requires auditees who have not implemented recommendations after one year, to report to us and to the Legislature why they have not implemented them or to state when they intend to implement them. Below, is a listing of each recommendation the State Auditor made in the report referenced and a link to the most recent response from the auditee addressing their progress in implementing the recommendation and the State Auditor's assessment of auditee's response based on our review of the supporting documentation.
Recommendations in Report 2022-102: California Department of Public Health: It Has Missed Opportunities to Collect and Report Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Data (Release Date: April 2023)
| Recommendations to Legislature | ||
|---|---|---|
| Number | Recommendation | Status |
| 1 | To ensure that Public Health's branches use the SOGI data it collects to identify and address disparities in health outcomes, and to provide Public Health with an efficient mechanism to fulfill its current reporting requirements, the Legislature should require Public Health to provide an annual report to the public and to the Legislature that includes a description of Public Health's efforts to collect, analyze, and report SOGI data, including a comprehensive list of forms that are required to collect SOGI data, the level of compliance with SOGI data requirements for those forms, the forms exempt from these requirements, and the reasons for such exemptions. |
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| 2 | To ensure that Public Health's branches use the SOGI data it collects to identify and address disparities in health outcomes, and to provide Public Health with an efficient mechanism to fulfill its current reporting requirements, the Legislature should require Public Health to provide an annual report to the public and to the Legislature that includes a description of the status of any improvement or replacement of CalREDIE—Public Health's database used for statewide reporting of communicable diseases. |
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| 3 | To ensure that Public Health's branches use the SOGI data it collects to identify and address disparities in health outcomes, and to provide Public Health with an efficient mechanism to fulfill its current reporting requirements, the Legislature should require Public Health to provide an annual report to the public and to the Legislature that includes a description of the outcomes of data analyses that Public Health has performed or has allowed other qualified researchers to perform using the SOGI data it has collected. |
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| 4 | To ensure that Public Health's branches use the SOGI data it collects to identify and address disparities in health outcomes, and to provide Public Health with an efficient mechanism to fulfill its current reporting requirements, the Legislature should require Public Health to provide an annual report to the public and to the Legislature that includes a description of the steps Public Health has taken or has caused to be taken to improve services or program outcomes for underserved LGBTQ populations. |
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| 5 | To ensure that Public Health's branches use the SOGI data it collects to identify and address disparities in health outcomes, and to provide Public Health with an efficient mechanism to fulfill its current reporting requirements, the Legislature should require Public Health to provide an annual report to the public and to the Legislature that includes a description of, until fully implemented, the progress Public Health has made in implementing recommendations from this audit report. |
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| 6 | To ensure that Public Health collects sufficient data to effectively implement and deliver critical services, the Legislature should amend the SOGI data collection law to require Public Health to collect SOGI data from third-party entities, including local health jurisdictions, on any forms or electronic data systems unless prohibited by federal or state law. |
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| 7 | The Legislature should amend state law to allow voluntarily provided sexual orientation and gender identity data to be included with the immunization data that is reported to Public Health. |
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| Recommendations to Public Health, Department of | ||
|---|---|---|
| Number | Recommendation | Status |
| 8 | To consistently collect accurate SOGI data, Public Health should standardize its definitions and provide guidance on how its forms should ask questions related to sexual orientation and gender identity, guidance on the minimum categories or response options to be collected, and guidelines on how to aggregate and report responses. |
Pending |
| 9 | To consistently collect accurate SOGI data, Public Health should complete and implement the goals of its 2022 SOGI workgroup. |
Pending |
| 10 | To consistently collect accurate SOGI data, Public Health should periodically identify all of its forms and review whether the forms are required to collect SOGI data or whether a statutory exemption applies. |
Pending |
| 11 | To consistently collect accurate SOGI data, Public Health should develop and implement procedures to review and approve its branches' SOGI data collection processes, including a review of branches' reasons for not collecting SOGI data. |
Pending |
| 12 | Public Health should develop a process to verify that all local health jurisdictions that do not use CalREDIE are reporting SOGI data to Public Health and are complying with SOGI data reporting requirements by October 2023. |
Pending |
| 13 | Public Health should develop an action plan to ensure that CalREDIE users and Public Health programs can extract SOGI data for all of the reportable disease conditions currently in CalREDIE by October 2023. |
Pending |
| 14 | Public Health should work with local health jurisdictions and the future vendor of the new surveillance system by October 2023 to ensure that the system will be able to receive SOGI data from local health jurisdictions, and be able to extract and report SOGI data for all reportable disease conditions. |
Pending |
| 15 | To ensure that its programs are using SOGI data to identify and address disparities in health outcomes, and to provide required information to the Legislature, Public Health should require regular reports from its branches that collect SOGI data; these reports should include the branches' efforts to record and report SOGI data, the outcomes of their SOGI data analyses, and the steps they have taken to improve their services or program outcomes for underrepresented populations. |
Pending |
| 16 | To improve Public Health's ability to collect SOGI data, it should make available to local health jurisdictions and health care providers, a standardized definition, wording, and format of SOGI data questions and response fields.
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Pending |
| 17 | To improve Public Health's ability to collect SOGI data, it should make available to local health jurisdictions and health care providers, directions for soliciting SOGI information and education in the importance of doing so. |
Pending |