The Call to Action proposes the following set of recommendations to prevent new infections; reduce deaths and adverse health outcomes; address disparities; coordinate action among federal, state, and local agencies and health systems; and ultimately reduce health care costs.
Specific Action Steps:
Review NASTAD’s and accompanying and share with staff and stakeholders in your jurisdiction
Identify opportunities to implement or expand activities geared towards the elimination of hepatitis C such as creating a state or local elimination plan
Focus on Prevention, Care, and Treatment for Priority Populations: The opioid epidemic is pervasive in rural, urban, and suburban America. HCV prevention, care, and treatment must be part of a comprehensive strategy to address the epidemic. People of color, Native Americans, homeless individuals, incarcerated populations, and people co-infected with HIV and HCV are disproportionately impacted by HCV and need to be engaged in efforts to end this epidemic.
Address the Opioid Epidemic and Drug User Health: The most cost effective strategy to prevent new HCV infections is to ensure a robust drug user health service infrastructure, with harm reduction strategies at the center, is in place in states and localities, and supported by federal resources.
Screening, Diagnosis, and Link to Care: Effort must be made to reach those most vulnerable for HCV by implementing screening and related services within the community, which often means outside of the clinical care setting. Improving the hepatitis C surveillance infrastructure, including making more resources available to support states and cities, is also critical.
Treatment and Follow Up: In response to the high initial cost of direct-acting antiviral HCV medications, many private and public health insurance payers responded by restricting access to these relatively new medications to those with the most advanced disease and who were not actively using drugs. With elimination as the goal, treatment must be accessible and affordable to everyone, and especially those living with HCV who have been subject to discriminatory, arbitrary sobriety requirements.
NASTAD’s vision is that new HCV infections in the United States are rare, and when they do occur, every person, regardless of substance use status, age, gender, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, socio-economic status, incarceration status or geographic location, will have access to quality, affordable health care including comprehensive screening, care, and treatment leading to cure, without stigma and discrimination.
NASTAD believes that eliminating HCV should be a top public health priority. Unless we act boldly and urgently, we will continue to lose ground against the hepatitis C epidemic. We are hopeful that stakeholders at the national, state, and local levels will join our efforts to make the elimination of HCV in the U.S. a reality.
For more information on NASTAD’s , or hepatitis program and policy activities, please contact Chris Taylor, Senior Director, Hepatitis.
Please distribute to your networks. Thank you for your commitment to ending the hepatitis C epidemic!
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The USPSTF's draft recommendations on testing hepatitis C among injection drug users and others at high risk is a major improvement over previous guidelines (a grade “B”, meaning testing is recommended).
The letter of support urges the House and Senate Appropriations Committees to fund the Division of Viral Hepatitis at a level of $62.8 million in FY2017.
Please help us protect Medicaid consumers and their healthcare providers, by asking Governor Cuomo to please sign bill A.10248B/S7384A, requiring the Health department to create a standardized form that all Medicaid Managed Care plans would have to use for the pharmacy benefit.
