Andrea Downing is the co-founder and Board President of The Light Collective.
Downing’s journey in health privacy advocacy is deeply personal. Diagnosed as a “previvor” of the BRCA1 mutation at age 25, she opted for a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy to mitigate her high risk of breast cancer. Her technical background propelled her to advocate for privacy protections within the breast cancer community.
She has been a prominent figure in health privacy research, focusing on the implications of technology and social media on patient data privacy. One of her notable contributions is her work on the security vulnerabilities within “private” Facebook groups, which had significant privacy implications for health-related support groups. (CNN: Read more). Downing also investigated the use of surveillance technologies in health related websites. The study sparked further investigations into the use and regulation of tracking technologies within healthcare, leading to significant actions by regulatory bodies such as the FTC and HHS, which moved to ban certain types of trackers to protect patient privacy
Her work has been instrumental in driving changes that aim to safeguard patient privacy in the increasingly digital landscape of healthcare.
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