The rise in tuberculosis (TB) recently in the US has been attributed to immigration, HIV, homelessness, and other causes. Perhaps as important as any is neglect of public health, and failure to apply what is known about how better to control, if not to effectively eliminate TB. The Washington, DC area has continued to have its own significant problems with TB through the years. The premise of this proposal is that the handling of TB in DC will be improved by an effort to provide both more intensive education, and to enhance communication and coordination among the various bodies and institutions involved with TB treatment and control throughout the metropolitan area.
Specific aims will be to: (1) improve the undergraduate medical teaching about TB at Georgetown; (2) enhance postgraduate medical and nursing education at Georgetown and in the city, especially among those involved with inner city hospitals and populations, including arrangement of a city-wide TB conference every other year; (3) assist in the re-establishment of a broadly-based Tuberculosis Elimination Committee for the District of Columbia, in collaboration with the American Lung Association and the Health Department, in keeping with the recent recommendations of a CDC Committee that evaluated the tuberculosis situation in DC, and work for enhanced communication on TB matters at all levels locally in the Washington area and nationally.
