Grave concern arose after 2011 when governments, at least in Canada, the United States and Great Britain began to make changes or were working toward changes that would serve to dismantle and/or erode the census. As part of the epidemiologist's toolkit, the implications were of serious concern owing to the damage that could arise and thereby undermine the role of epidemiology in fulfilling its mission. INEP elected to bring attention to this concern.

The O'Connor Group was formed with, among others, members of INEP during the American Public Health Association’s (APHA) Annual Meeting in Boston, 2013. Together they organized, under the leadership of Robin Taylor Wilson and Shirley Cramer, a special symposium that took place at the APHA’s 142nd Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA on November 17, 2014 entitled International Threats to the Mission of Public Health as Governments Dismantle/Erode the Census. Soon after, the O’Connor Group was absorbed into INEP. The intent behind the special symposium was to produce a peer-reviewed article to advance the thinking developed in the special symposium. It appeared in print in October, 2017.

INEP PUBLICATIONS:

Challenges to the census: international trends and a need to consider public health benefits was published in the Journal of the Royal Society for Public Health, Public Health, October, 2017; 151:87-97. The article was selected as the Editors' Choice article. The full citation is: Wilson RT, Hasanali SH, Sheikh M, Cramer S, Weinberg G, Firth A, Weiss SH, Soskolne CL. Challenges to the census: international trends and a need to consider public health benefits. Public Health. 2017 Oct; 151:87-97. MID: 28759883. doi: 10.1016/j.puhe.2017.05.015. Epub 2017 Jul 29.r