Cason Schmit named to National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics

Cason Schmit, JD, assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the Texas A&M University School of Public Health, has been named to the Health Resources and Services Administration’s National Committee on Vital and Health Statistics by U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Xavier Becerra. He will serve a four-year term on the advisory committee, which is comprised of nationally recognized experts that advise the HHS Secretary, report regularly to Congress on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) implementation, and also serve as a forum for interaction between HHS and interested private sector groups on a range of health data issues.

Schmit directs the Master of Public Health (MPH) program in Health Policy and Management and the Program in Health Law and Policy at the School of Public Health. A licensed attorney with a JD from the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University, his current research centers on health information technology, particularly the alignment (or misalignment) between law and public health ethics. A voting member of the IEEE Artificial Intelligence (AI) governance standards workgroup, he is actively exploring AI regulatory strategies that integrate public health policy innovations.

Schmit also advises state and national policymakers and advisory bodies on health data policy and public health data governance, collaborating with organizations such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Council for State and Territorial Epidemiologists.

Initially at the CDC, and continuing at Texas A&M, Schmit explores the role of law as a tool to promote population health. He studies law as a structural determinant of health and has over a decade’s experience in legal epidemiology, the scientific study of the impact of law on population health. He has created longitudinal and cross-sectional legal datasets for assessing the health or economic impacts of law, including datasets on vaccination laws, health information exchange, telehealth, community health workers, and COVID-19 emergency actions. His work has directly influenced proposed federal public health data modernization policies.

The Texas A&M School of Public Health is the fifth-largest school of public health student body nationally and the largest in Texas and has over $36 million in new research awards last fiscal year. Among some of its many impacts, the school is providing tailored opioid prevention services and implementing a comprehensive educational program for Texas schoolchildren K-1, serving as the independent evaluators of the Texas Medicaid 1115 Waiver, and is home to Rural Healthy People 2030 – a companion piece to Healthy People 2030 and one-of-a-kind national resource.