Public health and data protection: an inevitable collision or potential for a meeting of minds?

This quote from a publication on data protection surprisingly, but not uniquely omits ‘the public’ from the public health arena. Recently it has been suggested that changes in data protection legislation may jeopardize public health practice and research. In this paper we summarize current data protection legislation and guidance and discuss the implications of these for public health practice. In addition we discuss recent changes to legislation and guidance in relation to established medical ethical principles and argue for a greater involvement of the public in the debates that will inform development of legislation in this area.