NFL Collective Bargaining Agreement

Article 39
Players’ Rights To Medical Care and Treatment

Section 18(b)
NFL Player Scientific & Medical Research Protocol

This Section governs the protection, extraction and analysis of certain player health information from the NFL Electronic Medical Record System (“EMR”) database as set forth in Article 40 of this Agreement, and its subsequent use and dissemination in furtherance of various player health and safety initiatives. This Section establishes guidelines for active or interventional research involving NFL players. Each request governed by this Section must follow the steps outlined in Appendix X to this Agreement— a failure to obtain the necessary consent/approval at any step in the process will result in the request being denied (i.e., where the approval of multiple parties is required, the denial by any one party will result in the request being denied).

(b)

Data Use and Disclosure: In accordance with past practice, IQVIA will continue to analyze relevant injury/illness data collected and will submit reports to the NFL, the Clubs via the Injury Surveillance System. The NFL will produce a copy of such reports to the NFLPA (i) prior to distributing such reports publicly and (ii) whenever such reports are distributed to NFL health and Safety Committees in accordance with this Article.. The NFLPA may also request that the NFL direct IQVIA to produce certain data sets and analysis and the NFL will not unreasonably deny such requests, provided that the NFLPA shall bear the cost of any such analysis it requests. Any such reports produced to either party relating to traditional employer injury/illness surveillance data will always be disseminated to the NFL, NFL Clubs and the NFLPA with players’ names, if any, redacted. Furthermore, IQVIA will use best efforts to preserve the confidentiality of individual players by only reporting the minimal information necessary to identify the concept, trend, or subject of any given report; however the Parties understand and acknowledge that certain traditional employer injury/illness surveillance reports may contain information that would result in the information not being considered de-identified data under HIPAA. If data or analyses furnished by IQVIA to the NFLPA does not contain only de-identified data, then the NFLPA expressly understands and agrees that it may not disseminate such reports beyond the NFLPA’s Executive Committee, Medical Director, health and safety consultants, legal staff, and/or Mackey-White Committee members absent agreement from the NFL. For purposes of clarity, the foregoing shall not be interpreted to limit the NFLPA’s ability to disclose relevant health, safety and/or injury information contained in such reports to the NFLPA membership. Further, nothing in this Section is intended to limit the NFLPA’s rights to or use of information it is otherwise entitled to under this Agreement and/or applicable law.