Northeastern Spotlight

Spring 2018 Volume 13 – Number 1

News and Announcements

The Pennsylvania TB Program Rolls Out a LTBI Toolkit

Eliminating TB requires expanded efforts to diagnose and treat LTBI, including increased collaboration between the public and private health sectors. To assist in that effort, the PA TB Program introduced the LTBI Toolkit.

LTBI Toolkit designed by the Pennsylvania TB Program

The toolkit was designed as a tool for community and public health nurses to engage primary care physicians (PCPs) who are likely to see patients at increased risk of TB infection.

Key components of the kit include:
• The educational CDC guidebook, “Latent Tuberculosis Infection: A Guide for Primary Health Providers”
• An article from the August 2017 issue of the American Journal of Nursing titled, “Tuberculosis: A New Screening Recommendation and an Expanded Approach to Elimination in the United States”
• A new tri-fold brochure listing three key resources for information about TB (the PA TB Program, CDC and the Global TB Institute at Rutgers)
• CDC infographics about LTBI and TB Disease
• CDC factsheets about:

• Who to test for LTBI
• The two types of tests – the TST and the blood tests
• The three different LTBI treatment regimens

• CDC factsheets for patients about their LTBI treatment regimen

The toolkit is packaged in a box as a convenient place to store the TB materials and has a carry handle for convenience. Since the launch of the toolkit on November 6, 2017, the PA TB Program has sent over 160 toolkits, mainly to public health nurses who use them to start a conversation about TB with local clinicians.

Submitted by The Pennsylvania TB Program