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The Harvard Medical School Center for Global Health Delivery–Dubai hosted a technical meeting in Dubai bringing together leaders in TB care and prevention to discuss a best-practice framework of program indicators for monitoring a comprehensive approach to the tuberculosis epidemic. Sixty participants—including clinicians, researchers, program implementers, and policy makers—represented 14 countries. Many of the participants are associated with the Zero TB Initiative. This Initiative aims to build broad-based local coalitions that can together implement a comprehensive “Search, Treat, Prevent” approach to rapidly accelerate progress against TB.
As programs move toward adopting a comprehensive approach to tackling the TB epidemic, a need has been identified for indicators that can be used to monitor, evaluate, and improve program performance. The current performance indicators used by TB programs focus almost exclusively on the treatment of patients who passively present to the health system and are treated for TB disease. In contrast, a comprehensive approach includes actively searching for people who have TB, enhanced support during treatment, and the treatment of TB infection to prevent future disease. An expanded indicator framework is required for such an approach. At this meeting, a group of researchers from the Zero TB Initiative proposed a best-practice framework of process indicators that can be used to monitor program performance, identify gaps, and measure progress in the implementation of a comprehensive approach to the TB epidemic. They presented a draft guidance document intended to help programs develop systems to operationalize the framework. Participants discussed both the framework and the guidance document in both small group and full group settings, sharing their diverse perspectives, experience, and expertise, and providing constructive critique.
Participants enthusiastically supported the development of a comprehensive framework of indicators and expressed their intent to employ this framework to improve performance and streamline implementation of their TB programs. Their input has informed the further development of the guidance document. Ultimately, these indicators will help Zero TB coalitions improve their programs to eliminate TB.
Number of Participants: 62
Number of Countries: 14
Countries Represented: Australia, Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Mongolia, Pakistan, Peru, Singapore, South Africa, Switzerland, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, the United States of American, and Vietnam