Wednesday, February 5, 2025
2/5/2025
San Diego County is the 5th most populous county in the U.S., borders the city and state in Mexico with the highest incidence of tuberculosis (TB) in that nation, and is home to the San Ysidro Port of Entry, the busiest land border crossing in the United States. San Diego County sees higher rates of active TB than both California and the United States. In 2023, San Diego County reported 243 new active TB cases, a 17% increase compared to 208 in 2022. The majority of cases (66%) occurred in persons who were born outside the U.S. The highest proportion of cases occurred in Hispanics (51%) and Asian/Pacific Islanders (30%), highlighting the importance of TB as a health equity priority in San Diego County. The TB Control and Refugee Health Branch, Department of Public Health Services (PHS), in the County of San Diego Health and Human Services Agency (HHSA), will use the funding provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) TB Elimination and Laboratory Cooperative Agreement to reduce TB morbidity and mortality in San Diego through managing, providing, and monitoring access to TB and latent TB infection (LTBI) care for the chronically underserved communities in San Diego that are disproportionately impacted by TB. The purpose is to strengthen TB control, prevention, and elimination through county services, laboratory activities, and partnerships with other health jurisdictions, state agencies, local agencies, community provider and community-based organizations in order to reduce incidence of active TB in San Diego County. Strategies include diagnosis and treatment of persons with TB disease (Strategy 1), conducting contact investigations for infectious TB cases (Strategy 2), testing and treating populations at higher risk for TB and LTBI (Strategy 3), program planning, monitoring, evaluation, and improvement (Strategy 4), surveillance (Strategy 5), human resource development and partnerships (Strategy 6), and laboratory strengthening (Strategy 7). The County of San Diego aims to reinforce and strengthen our existing county TB control, prevention and TB elimination activities through training, education, communications, collaborations, and continue to expand our programs and activities with public and private community partners. These strategies will be accomplished by focusing TB and LTBI activities on the priority outcomes outlined in our proposal.
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).