Public Health Reports最新文献

Vaccination disparities are part of a larger system of health inequities among racial and ethnic groups in the United States. To increase vaccine equity of racial and ethnic populations, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) designed the Partnering for Vaccine Equity program in January 2021, which funded and supported national, state, local, and community organizations in 50 states-which include Indian Health Service Tribal Areas; Washington, DC; and Puerto Rico-to implement culturally tailored activities to improve access to, availability of, and confidence in COVID-19 and influenza vaccines. To increase vaccine uptake at the local level, CDC partnered with national organizations such as the National Urban League and Asian & Pacific Islander American Health Forum to engage community-based organizations to take action. Lessons learned from the program include the importance of directly supporting and engaging with the community, providing tailored messages and access to vaccines to reach communities where they are, training messengers who are trusted by those in the community, and providing support to funded partners through trainings on program design and implementation that can be institutionalized and sustained beyond the COVID-19 pandemic. Building on these lessons will ensure CDC and other public health partners can continue to advance vaccine equity, increase vaccine uptake, improve health outcomes, and build trust with communities as part of a comprehensive adult immunization infrastructure.

Objectives: People with disabilities, people experiencing homelessness, and people who have substance use disorders face unique health challenges. Gaps in public health surveillance data limit the identification of public health needs of these groups and data-driven action. This study aimed to identify current practices, challenges, and opportunities for collecting and reporting COVID-19 surveillance data for these populations.

Methods: We used a rapid qualitative assessment to explore COVID-19 surveillance capacities. From July through October 2021, we virtually interviewed key informants from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, state and local health departments, and health care providers across the United States. We thematically analyzed and contextualized interview notes, peer-reviewed articles, and participant documents using a literature review.

Results: We identified themes centered on foundational structural and systems issues that hinder actionable surveillance data for these and other populations that are disproportionately affected by multiple health conditions. Qualitative data analysis of 61 interviews elucidated 4 primary challenges: definitions and policies, resources, data systems, and articulation of the purpose of data collection to these groups. Participants noted the use of multisector partnerships, automated data collection and integration, and data scorecards to circumvent challenges.

Conclusions: This study highlights the need for multisector, systematic improvements in surveillance data collection and reporting to advance health equity. Improvements must be buttressed with adequate investment in data infrastructure and promoted through clear communication of how data are used to protect health.

Objective: Opioid use disorder (OUD) affects approximately 5.6 million people in the United States annually, yet rates of the use of effective medication for OUD (MOUD) treatment are low. We conducted an observational cohort study from August 2017 through May 2021, the MOUD Study, to better understand treatment engagement and factors that may influence treatment experiences and outcomes. In this article, we describe the study design, data collected, and treatment outcomes.

Methods: We recruited adult patients receiving OUD treatment at US outpatient facilities for the MOUD Study. We collected patient-level data at 5 time points (baseline to 18 months) via self-administered questionnaires and health record data. We collected facility-level data via questionnaires administered to facility directors at 2 time points. Across 16 states, 62 OUD treatment facilities participated, and 1974 patients enrolled in the study. We summarized descriptive data on the characteristics of patients and OUD treatment facilities and selected treatment outcomes.

Results: Approximately half of the 62 facilities were private, nonprofit organizations; 62% focused primarily on substance use treatment; and 20% also offered mental health services. Most participants were receiving methadone (61%) or buprenorphine (32%) and were predominately non-Hispanic White (68%), aged 25-44 years (62%), and female (54%). Compared with patient-reported estimates at baseline, 18-month estimates suggested that rates of abstinence increased (55% to 77%), and rates of opioid-related overdoses (7% to 2%), emergency department visits (9% to 4%), and arrests (15% to 7%) decreased.

Conclusions: Our results demonstrated the benefits of treatment retention not only on abstinence from opioid use but also on other quality-of-life metrics, with data collected during an extended period. The MOUD Study produced rich, multilevel data that can lay the foundation for an evidence base to inform OUD treatment and support improvement of care and patient outcomes.

Objectives: The Louisiana Department of Health identified a need for greater outreach in low-income Black communities that addressed environmental asthma triggers. We piloted an asthma virtual home visit (VHV) program and evaluated its reach and ability to promote asthma self-management strategies in communities with a high prevalence of poorly controlled asthma.

Methods: Participants from Louisiana were continuously recruited into the VHV program starting in March 2021 and provided with asthma education materials. Participants reporting poorly controlled asthma and environmental triggers were also offered 3 VHVs with a respiratory therapist. All participants were asked to complete a preintervention and postintervention knowledge test, an Asthma Control Test (ACT) (maximum score = 25; scores ≤19 indicate poorly controlled asthma), and a final survey that assessed perceptions about asthma management and reduction of environmental triggers.

Results: As of October 2022, 147 participants were enrolled in the program, and 52 had consented to and received ≥1 VHV. Forty VHV recipients (77%) were aged <18 years, 40 (77%) were Black people, and 46 (88%) were from families with extremely low or low incomes. Asthma symptoms improved across all participants, with a median increase of 2.4 points on the ACT. Knowledge tests revealed that 86% of participants learned about ≥1 new asthma trigger; a larger percentage of VHV recipients than nonrecipients (68% vs 36%) had an improved knowledge test score postintervention. Compared with preintervention, about three-quarters of participants reported feeling more empowered to self-manage their asthma and a significant improvement in their quality of life postintervention.

Conclusions: The program provided virtual asthma education to communities with a high burden of asthma and improved asthma outcomes for participants. Similar virtual models can be used to promote health equity, especially in areas with limited access to health care.

Objectives: Minimal research has examined the number of health departments conducting work related to equity and/or the kind of work, if any, they are conducting. We examined the relationship between public health accreditation and work related to health equity by analyzing accredited health departments' responses to a prompt in the Public Health Accreditation Board's (PHAB's) annual report.

Methods: We analyzed self-reported responses from accredited health departments to questions about emerging public health issues and innovations in PHAB's annual report. We identified themes using a priori and inductive coding.

Results: A total of 316 health departments submitted an annual report from January 2015 through December 2021. Of those health departments, 283 (89.6%) stated in their annual report that they engaged in work related to health equity, 50 (17.7%) of which provided a narrative about this work. Of those 50 health departments, the most common theme reported was community partnership, described by 23 (46.0%) health departments. The next most reported themes were COVID-19 vaccine access for racially or socioeconomically marginalized communities (n = 17, 34.0%) and programs related to health equity (n = 16, 32.0%).

Conclusions: We found that most accredited health departments conduct work related to health equity. Further research is needed to examine characteristics that influence a health department's likelihood of conducting equity work. Models and resources on how health departments, particularly small health departments, can begin equity work would be valuable.

Objectives: Prevention methods for carbon monoxide (CO) poisoning in Wisconsin address occupational and nonoccupational exposures together, but differences between the settings could inform new approaches to preventing occupational CO poisonings. We described occupational CO poisonings in Wisconsin from July 1, 2018, through July 1, 2021, using surveillance data from the Wisconsin Electronic Disease Surveillance System and Wisconsin Poison Center.

Methods: We identified cases of CO poisoning from the Wisconsin Electronic Disease Surveillance System and Wisconsin Poison Center. Occupational CO poisonings were records where "workplace" was recorded as the location of exposure. We excluded records classified as suspect/not a case, those missing laboratory results or information on exposure source/location, and intentional poisonings. We compared characteristics between occupational and nonoccupational settings using odds ratios (ORs), and we estimated crude incidence rates of occupational exposures by occupation.

Results: We identified 614 cases of CO poisoning, of which 168 (27.4%) were occupational exposures. When compared with patients with nonoccupational exposures, patients with occupational exposures were more likely to be male (OR = 3.8; 95% CI, 2.4-6.1), Hispanic (OR = 2.4; 95% CI, 1.4-4.2), and younger (mean difference [SD] = 6.6 [20.9]). Several CO sources were significantly associated with occupational poisonings: forklifts (OR = 58.4; 95% CI, 13.9-246.1; P < .001), pressure sprayers (OR = 2.4; 95% CI, 1.3-4.4; P = .003), and other gasoline-powered tools (OR = 3.8; 95% CI, 2.3-6.3; P < .001). The natural resources, construction, and maintenance occupation group had the highest crude incidence rate-45.0 poisonings per 100 000 full-time equivalent employees.

Conclusions: Incorporating data from the Wisconsin Poison Center improved data quality, but surveillance is limited by underreporting. Creating strategies to increase reporting would allow for a more comprehensive understanding of occupational CO poisoning.

Objective: Assessing mobility among people with HIV is an important consideration when measuring HIV incidence, prevalence, and the care continuum in the United States. Our aims were to measure mobility among people with HIV compared with the general population and to examine factors associated with migration among people with HIV.

Methods: We calculated state-to-state move-in and move-out migration rates for 2011 through 2019 using National HIV Surveillance System data for people with HIV and using US Census data for the general population. For people with HIV, we also assessed the association between migration and HIV care outcomes.

Results: From 2011 through 2019, the US general population had stable migration, whereas migration rates among people with HIV fluctuated and were higher than among the general population. Among people with HIV, migration rates in 2019 were higher among people assigned male sex at birth versus female sex at birth, among people aged ≤24 years versus ≥25 years, among people with HIV infection attributed to male-to-male sexual contact versus other transmission categories, and among non-Hispanic Other people (ie, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander, or multiple races) versus Hispanic, non-Hispanic Black, and non-Hispanic White people. Receipt of HIV medical care (90.3% vs 75.5%) and achieving viral suppression (72.1% vs 65.3%) were higher among people with HIV who migrated versus those who did not.

Conclusions: People with HIV in the United States are more mobile than the general population. Determining the mobility of people with HIV can help with strategic allocation of HIV prevention and care resources.

Objectives: Women experiencing homelessness have higher rates of unintended pregnancy than stably housed women and may benefit from reproductive interconception care. How reproductive interconception care differs between women who did and did not experience perinatal homelessness is not known. We estimated prevalence ratios of reproductive interconception behaviors among US women experiencing homelessness during the perinatal period.

Methods: We used data from the 2016-2019 Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System to calculate the prevalence of 5 reproductive interconception care outcomes: attending a maternal postpartum checkup, participating in a conversation with a health care provider about birth intervals, receiving family planning counseling, obtaining a prescription for short-acting contraception, and having a long-acting reversible contraceptive inserted. We used complex survey weights, stratified by perinatal homelessness, and converted adjusted logistic regression odds ratios between housing status and outcome variables to adjusted prevalence ratios (aPRs) and 95% CIs.

Results: Among participants, approximately 2.4% (weighted percentage; unweighted 2953 of 100 706) experienced homelessness sometime in the 12 months before their children were born; the majority were non-Hispanic (83.2%) and White (69.4%), were not married (82.2%), and had public health insurance (56.8%). Perinatal homelessness was significantly associated with a lower prevalence of attending a postpartum maternal visit (aPR = 0.90; 95% CI, 0.87-0.94) and a higher prevalence of having a conversation about birth intervals with their health care providers (aPR = 1.13; 95% CI, 1.03-1.21).

Conclusions: Findings suggest that improving attendance at postpartum visits and evaluating birth interval conversations may strengthen interconception care practices while contextualizing social determinants such as housing stability. Improving uptake of postpartum visits may reduce unintended pregnancy, short birth intervals, and adverse birth outcomes in future pregnancies among women experiencing homelessness.

Objective: If untreated, hepatitis C virus (HCV) leads to poor health outcomes, including liver disease and death, particularly among people with HIV (PWH). We describe trends over time in incidence rates of HCV diagnoses among PWH in the state of Georgia.

Methods: We constructed a retrospective cohort of PWH in Georgia by using matched HIV and HCV case surveillance data from people diagnosed with HCV infection from January 1, 2014, through December 31, 2019. We calculated annual incidence rates per 1000 person-years and estimated trends over time in HCV diagnoses among the cohort of PWH by demographic characteristics and HIV care outcomes using Poisson regression analysis, with α = .05 considered significant.

Results: From 2014 through 2019, among 49 530 PWH in Georgia, 1945 (3.9%) were diagnosed with HCV infection. During this period, overall incidence per 1000 person-years of newly diagnosed HCV infection among PWH decreased from 8.7 to 4.5 (P for trend < .001). However, from 2014 through 2019, the annual incidence rates of PWH who were newly diagnosed with HCV infection increased from 4.6 to 7.1 (P for trend = .003) among people born from 1980 through 1989 and from 3.3 to 12.8 (P for trend < .001) among people born in 1990 or later.

Conclusion: Strategies are needed to increase prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of HIV/HCV coinfection, particularly among PWH born in 1980 and later. Routine linkage of state surveillance data can inform prioritization of PWH at highest risk of HCV infection.