He Built a Server to Protect Indigenous Health Data

A report from Nytimes says Joseph Yracheta was in charge of a repository that compiled and protected tribal health data. He led the Native Biodata Consortium, described as the first nonprofit data and sample repository within the geographic bounds and legal jurisdiction of an American Indian nation on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in Eagle Butte, S.D.

NativeBio participated in a program created by the National Institutes of Health for studying Black and Native communities and began work in February of 2024, building a server network to share Covid-19 data within the jurisdictional security of each tribal nation.

The most common data elements were survey questions, including age, location, education, how many times someone caught Covid-19 and how many times they got vaccinated, and the plan was to place survey data in a virtual container so scientists could access it under contractual obligations to follow each tribal nation’s laws; that model could later be modified for higher-risk genetic data.

United States, Eagle Butte, South Dakota