The HIPAA question really underlines the callously sacrificial approach of college sport towards campus athletic workers. 1/x https://twitter.com/nkalamb/status/1298257469718683655

Why do we have HIPAA laws?

To protect the health and well-being of individuals against harm and exploitation.

So, why might these rights justly be waived? Presumably in the same spirit: in situations where disclosure protects the patient in some way.

During the pandemic, universities have been using HIPAA to say they cannot disclose testing results of athletes and others on campus, since it is private information.

Obv, it is wrong that HIPAA prevents uni disclosure of COVID test results in the aggregate since that isn’t *personal* health data. Yet, they are doing so to protect institutional interests precisely at the *expense* of the individual: to preserve conditions that caused the harm.

In this situation, waiving one’s right to HIPAA privacy becomes a means to defend one’s health—to shine a light on fundamentally unhealthy and dangerous conditions. And, yet, instead we have the discourse that to do so contravenes HIPAA.

As @theHayleyHodson points out based on her experience with TBI at Stanford, there is nothing novel about this practice in US higher education and sport. https://twitter.com/nkalamb/status/1298238677282443264

Here is the point. While is bad that college sport is predicated on economic exploitation—yes, very bad—it is actually much worse that this exploitation is grounded in the systematic and conscious physical and emotional harm inflicted upon campus athletic workers.

This above all is what makes college sport as we know it morally unsustainable and indefensible.

/end