TB Centers of Excellence for Training, Education, and Medical Consultation (TB COE)

The TB Centers of Excellence for Training, Education, and Medical Consultation (TB COE) will serve as centers of excellence within their assigned regions with a focus on two major activities: (1) increasing Human Resource Development (HRD) for the prevention and control of TB through education and training activities, and; (2) increasing the capacity for appropriate medical evaluation and management of persons with TB disease and infection through medical consultation. The TB COEs will be established by a geographical distribution of States throughout the U.S., four to five centers funded through this announcement. The funds available for core activities will be used to support domestic TB education, training, and medical consultation activities. In the event, that additional funds become available from CDC for international projects, a letter of intent may be requested for participation. For the human resource development (HRD) activity, the TB COEs will be expected to provide high quality and innovative approaches in two areas: A. Training courses and technical assistance to others developing and providing TB courses. B. Educational and Training material product development Specific HRD tasks of the TB COE should include: Develop and enhance relationships with state and local public health agencies and other partners for TB control; Work with state and local public health agencies to identify training needs of public health workers, private providers, and other TB control partners; Expand capacities to provide professional education and training in TB to state and local health agencies and other partners; Develop and deliver competency-based education and training courses; Develop high quality TB educational resources through the use of the systematic health education process (steps of the process include: needs assessment, development, field-testing, implementation, and assessing effectiveness); Collaborate with state and local health agencies to develop methods for evaluating the effectiveness of the training activities; Work with state and local public health agencies to assess and monitor specific training needs in TB; Identify and share best practices, models, and innovative approaches to TB practices through the development of courses and educational materials; and Assure accountability through frequent monitoring and evaluation of TB COE activities and materials. The second major activity of the TB COEs is to provide medical consultation through a phone consultation process within their assigned region. Specifically, the TB COEs will provide physician and nurse consultation for appropriate screening, evaluation, diagnosis, management and treatment of patients and suspects for TB disease and latent TB infection (LTBI). They should also strive to build capacity of state and local TB programs ability to provide medical consultation services for their programs. TB COEs will perform the following tasks: Develop and implement a medical consultation service for their assigned region; Develop and implement a plan to maintain and increase the capacity of the region to appropriately evaluate and medically manage persons with TB disease and infection; Use and maintain a universal medical consultation database (MCD) in collaboration with CDC and other TB COE; Use the MCD to generate the MCD reports; Evaluate the usefulness and effectiveness of the MCD and describe medical consultation needs since its implementation; Provide medical consultations to panel physicians (physicians overseas who perform medical screening for applicants for U.S. immigration) on the diagnosis and treatment of active TB disease, including multi-drug resistant( MDR) TB and extensive drug resistant (XDR) TB; Develop a strategy, in collaboration with CDC, to adequately provide medical consultations to panel physicians and share the volume and processing of these in-coming calls among the TB COE; and Maintain and use a universal national Medical Consultation Database for panel physician medical consultation in collaboration with other TB COE and CDC.