Thursday, May 26, 2022
5/26/2022
Arkansas has a population of three-million people that reside in 75 counties grouped into five public health regions. The Arkansas Department of Health (ADH), a centralized agency, intends to use this funding to advance the tuberculosis (TB) elimination agenda for the next five-year period, 2020-2024. The strategy is two-fold: (1) enhance prompt diagnosis and treatment of active tuberculosis disease, and (2) champion high-risk based TB screenings, with razor focus on contact investigations, to include priority groups such as: the non-US born population, persons with HIV and diabetes, the homeless population, persons incarcerated, and residents of nursing homes. For example, an estimated 15,000 Marshallese reside in Arkansas and since 2014, the ADH has committed to screening the whole population. Arkansas was also the first state to require screening of international students in colleges going back to 2004. Furthermore, efforts are underway to accelerate bidirectional screening in the diabetes and TB programs; that is, all TB cases should have Hemoglobin A1c screenings and all persons with diabetes should have a baseline TB screening test. The management of active tuberculosis and latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) resides in the central office of the TB Program. There are two TB physicians, as well as a nurse consultant who oversee the optimum evaluation and treatment of all cases of TB and LTBI. In addition, the TB program has an extensive and dynamic consultation relationship with the Heartland Center of TB Excellence in San Antonio, Texas. Tuberculosis elimination activities will be implemented mainly at the regional level which includes a TB case manager in each of the five public health regions. Their role is to assure complete contact investigations and high-risk based TB screenings in their regions. TB case managers will engage and educate physicians in their areas to “Think TB” and conduct high–risk based screening. At the state level, a TB Elimination Advisory Committee has been established for the implementation and evaluation of a TB elimination agenda. Arkansas is 1 of 5 states that are pioneers in reporting LTBI to the CDC through supplemental funding for the period of July 2019 – December 2019. We intend to sustain this effort for the next five years. Therefore, we seek CDC support to recruit an epidemiologist to advance our TB elimination plan by continued reporting of LTBI to CDC. The State’s Public Health Laboratory has maintained excellence in the diagnosis of tuberculosis, and is a referral center for most medical centers in Arkansas. Recently, use of the Matrix-Assisted Laser Desorption/Ionization-Time of Flight (MALDI-TOF) and plan to make incremental gains in turn-around times (TAT). This goal will be accomplished through changes in specimen collection via the courier system, and electronic reporting of results in real-time, instead of overnight, by enhancement in the StarLIMS12 programming.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
