Peter Meyer is a senior fellow in the Health Care Programs Department at NORC at the University of Chicago. Meyer supports 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.
Prior to joining NORC, Meyer was the director of the Research Data Center (RDC) and Deputy Director of the Division of Research Methodology (DRM) at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS). Meyer focused on expanding access to Federal health data by the research community, and served on the Executive Committee for the Federal Statistical Research Data Centers, where he was involved in expanding from only four site locations to 33 throughout the United States.
As the director of RDC, Meyer implemented programmatic changes that halved the time needed for RDC proposal approvals, streamlining the process and improving the access and use of federal health data to the research community. He also expanded the number of RDCs from one to fifteen by expanding the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) network to two locations and by contracting with the Census Bureau to open new centers at research universities throughout the United States. Based on these improvements and expanding RDC access, Meyer advised other agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services, academia, and other organizations around creating data enclaves and other issues associated with statistical disclosure limitation.
At the national level, Meyer was awarded the Outstanding Government Service by the APHA Statistics Section in 2012. While at NCHS, Meyer was recognized with numerous Director’s Awards for his outstanding service. Meyer earned an award for Excellence in Innovation for leading progress in the analysis of genetic data and was recognized for his service during the U.S. Public Health Service to Hurricane Katrina by CDC and HHS Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service.