Tribute to Alan F. Westin

February 22, 2013 — Patient Privacy Rights mourns the passing of Dr. Alan Westin, a foundational thinker in the modern privacy movement and one of the nation's most respected academic authorities on public attitudes toward health privacy. We are grateful to have had the opportunity to honor him—and his extraordinary body of work—as one of the first recipients of PPR's Louis D. Brandeis Privacy Award in 2012.

Dr. Westin was a leading authority on consumer privacy opinion research and on understanding and interpreting the privacy attitudes of the American public. Beginning in 1978, he collaborated with Louis Harris & Associates (now Harris Interactive) and Opinion Research Corporation (ORC) on more than 60 national privacy surveys. He was the author or editor of 26 bo oks on constitutional law, civil liberties, American politics, and privacy.

For more than two decades, Dr. Westin's rigorous, thoughtful surveys and scholarship on privacy served as essential touchstones for the field. His work helped define how we understand the public's expectations about personal control over health information in electronic health systems; the trustworthiness of those systems; who patients trust to control the use of personal health information; the use of health data for research without consent; and how vulnerable populations experience—and evaluate—electronic health records and data privacy.

Alan Westin's legacy is woven into the fabric of privacy today: in how privacy is taught, discussed, measured, and defended. Most importantly, his impact endures in the countless advocates, scholars, policymakers, and citizens who found clearer language and stronger footing because of the tools he gave them.

We extend our deepest condolences to Dr. Westin's family, friends, colleagues, and the many members of the privacy community who learned from him and were shaped by his example. We remain grateful for his life, his intellect, and his unwavering commitment to the “right to be let alone” in a world increasingly designed to know, predict, and monetize.

Click below to watch Dr. Westin's longtime friend and colleague, Robert Belair, accept the Louis D. Brandeis Privacy Award on his behalf during the 2012 Celebration of Privacy.