Guidance

Abortion statistics: protocol for the release of personal data

How to apply for the release of and use confidential abortion data for scientific research purposes.

• From: Department of Health and Social Care
• Published: 23 August 2024

Applies to England and Wales

Documents

Protocol for the release of confidential abortions data for research purposes

HTML

Confidentiality declaration and non-disclosure agreement form

ODT, 32.7 KB

This file is in an OpenDocument format

Confidentiality declaration and non-disclosure agreement form

MS Word Document, 41.8 KB

Details

The Department of Health and Social Care has a statutory obligation to ensure that all abortion statistics for England and Wales do not contain patient-identifiable data that relates to a living individual.

However, under the Abortion Regulations 1991, patient-level data may be released in a controlled manner “for the purposes of bona fide scientific research”.

This guidance sets out:

• the grounds for releasing this personal data
• how researchers can apply for the release of abortion data using the form supplied
• how the data should be used, managed and stored

Published 23 August 2024