TB Notes 4, 2019 | Newsletters | Publications & Products | TB | CDC

TB Notes 4, 2019 | Newsletters | Publications & Products | TB | CDC

The National TB Program Objectives and Performance Targets for 2025

In September 2019, the Division of Tuberculosis Elimination released the national TB program objectives and performance targets for 2025. The national objectives include decreasing TB incidence rates for both US-born (0.4 cases per 100,000) and non-US—born populations (8.8 cases per 100,000), as well as for US-born minorities (1.0 case per 100,000) and children less than five years of age (0.1 cases per 100,000). The objectives incorporate key process indicators for patient management, laboratory reporting, contact investigations of infectious TB patients, and follow-up examination of immigrants and refugees who recently arrived in the United States with Class B notifications. The complete list of national objectives and targets can be found via https://www.cdc.gov/tb/programs/evaluation/indicators/default.htm

Indicators for measuring progress toward reaching the national objectives were established by the National TB Indicators Project (NTIP). Data reported to the National TB Surveillance System on the Report of a Verified Case of Tuberculosis (RVCT), the Aggregate Report for Program Evaluation (ARPE), and the Electronic Disease Notification (EDN) system are used in NTIP to calculate the indicators.

The 2025 national performance targets describe the level of success achieved by the top 10% of TB programs in the United State. To determine the targets, we used statistical models to find trends in NTIP data from 2010 through 2018. State and local TB programs with fewer than 150 TB cases from 2016–2018 were excluded. For each indicator, we developed a regression model to estimate the 90th percentile for each year, then used the fitted model to estimate the 90th percentile in the year 2025. The 90th-percentile values reflect the projected performance of the top 10% of TB programs in the United States in 2025.

TB program officials are encouraged to work closely with CDC Project Officers and Evaluation Consultants to conduct evaluation studies and to develop strategies to optimize performance to meet the targets.

Reported by Kai H. Young