Wednesday, March 12, 2025
3/12/2025
The Department of Public Health (DPH) Tuberculosis Control Program (TBCP) is responsible for the prevention and control of tuberculosis (TB) in the County of Los Angeles (LAC). LAC typically reports more TB cases than other reporting jurisdictions in the United States except for California, Texas, New York, New York City and Florida. Despite the challenges of maintaining TB program activities during the COVID-19 pandemic, LAC has reported only a modest increase (3.6%) in reported cases of TB, 536 to 542 from 2019 to 2023 relative to other jurisdictions reporting more than 500 cases of TB. The TBCP has reviewed its National Tuberculosis Indicators Project (NTIP) indicators performance and has identified known drug susceptibility result (DST), contact elicitation, contact initiation, and contact completion as program evaluation projects for 2025. To accomplish the priority activity of identifying individuals with suspected or confirmed TB disease and ensuring completion of treatment with standard and appropriate treatment regimens, the TBCP will continue to deliver technical assistance and medical consultation with both DPH and non-DPH partners to ensure the use of new and standard laboratory diagnosis and treatment regimens, and to improve completeness and timeliness of reporting. To expedite the diagnosis and treatment of person with LTBI, the TBCP will build on recent successes in focus population testing and treatment practices, utilizing partnership with DPH Clinic Services (CS) to provide TB services to immigrant arrivers, status adjustors, and people experiencing homelessness. Similarly, a partnership with the Department of Health Services has been successful with incarcerated populations. The TBCP will improve data systems to improve the documentation of evaluation and treatment completion among persons at highest risk of progression from LTBI to TB disease. This is one of the interventions that is likely to improve LACs performance for treatment outcomes in contacts to TB cases. To enhance our ability to report cases in a timely manner and monitor TB trends, the TBCP will complete the build of a new integrated surveillance system and work with DPH partners to support the data flow from the DPH electronic health record data to the surveillance system. Resources critical to monitor clusters and outbreaks will be maintained, along with State and Federal partnerships to limit ongoing transmission. In the last three years, the TBCP has seen a reduction in percentage cases associated with known outbreaks with the current approach to outbreak detection and response. The new integrated data system will support both case-level TB disease and LTBI reporting, case management, contact investigation, outbreak detection, and elimination activities. The TBCP also must provide leadership in establishing and dissemination clear guidance for best practices in clinical diagnosis and treatment, case management, contact investigation, and infection prevention and control for TB for DPH and the community. Through a coalition of community partners, including a Southern California Regional Community of Practice, and a Coalition to End TB in LAC advisory board to create an LA County TB Elimination Plan, the TBCP will expand collaborations with partners to resource and engage in elimination activities, as reduction of cases in LAC is heavily dependent on scaling up treatment of LTBI in high risk populations. Taken together, the successful execution of these activities will accelerate LAC toward TB elimination.
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).