This research is aimed to identify barriers to testing and treatment and specific intervention points for serving the foreign-born population. Epidemiology of TB in the U.S. reveals that more than half of the TB burden in the U.S. is in foreign-born persons. Reducing the incidence of TB among the foreign-born depends upon increasing the yield from three basic TB control activities:
- Detecting and treating persons with active TB with the goals of curing the individual with active TB and preventing further transmission
- Conducting contact investigations with the goals of active case finding, and identifying and treating contacts who have acquired latent TB infection (LTBI) or developed active disease
- Conducting targeted testing and treatment for LTBI with the goal of preventing future TB cases in high-risk populations
The research involves all of the 21 sites within the TB Epidemiologic Studies Consortium and is the first large population-based epidemiologic study of TB in the foreign-born in the U.S. and Canada. The San Francisco TB program is the CNTC partner for this study.
