Viral Hepatitis Testing: Health System Assessment Toolkit

NASTAD, in collaboration with the CDC’s Division of Viral Hepatitis, developed the “Viral Hepatitis Testing: Health System Assessment Toolkit,” a comprehensive resource that includes information and considerations for creating a jurisdiction-specific health system assessment (HSA) in response to recently revised and expanded hepatitis B and C screening guidelines issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force.

This resource supports jurisdictions funded by CDC-RFA-PS21-2103 to conduct a local assessment of high-volume health systems and their current hepatitis B and C screening practices. Supporting topics include identifying health systems, different methodologies for assessment (such as questionnaires, key informant interviews, review of written protocols, etc.), providing feedback from the assessment to health systems, and additional resources on conducting the assessment, screening guidelines and testing algorithms. This resource includes questions for health systems about best practices and factors to consider when engaging health systems, and a sample question bank for the assessment. This toolkit serves to complement the Viral Hepatitis Testing: Strategies for Assessing Laboratories Toolkit for jurisdictions completing the laboratory testing assessment.

To support this toolkit, NASTAD held a VLC session titled “Laboratory and Health Systems Assessment for Hepatitis Programs” (YouTube link). Additionally, some jurisdictions have uploaded their health system assessments to NPIN Integrated Viral Hepatitis Community (registration required to access).