NATIONAL TUBERCULOSIS CONTROLLERS ASSOCIATION EXECUTIVE BOARD CONFERENCE CALL MINUTES February 14, 2012 I. Attendees a. Jon Warkentin, Pat Infield, Jane Moore, Nancy Baruch, Jennifer Flood, Shea Rabley, Mike Arbisi, Sue Etkind, Sarah Burkholder, Christie Chesler, Lorna Will, Karen Farrell, Charles Crane, Carol Pozsik, Dawn Farrell. b. CDC Staff: Phil Talboy, Tom Navin, Christine Ho c. Guests: None II. NTCA Board Discussion Items a. The meeting was called to order by Jon Warkentin, President-elect b. Secretary s Report Jane Moore i. The minutes from the January 10, 2012 meeting were reviewed and accepted by the Board. c. Treasurer s Report Pat Infield i. The total of all NTCA accounts and current account balances for NTCA Money Market, Regular Checking, Primary Share Savings, and TB Walk Money Market were reported. d. Executive Director s Report Carol Pozsik i. Appreciates the fact that the Board wants to have orientation session for new Board members in June. She feels that this will make the organization run more smoothly, but we need to devote more than 2 hours to the project. e. NTNC Report Karen Farrell, President, NTNC i. NTNC Membership Committee working to increase membership. ii. Conference planning meeting to plan agenda for NTNC meeting in June underway. Agenda will focus on collaboration. Final agenda still in draft form. iii. NTNC Nominating Committee is working on candidates for the slate of officers for the upcoming year. f. NSTC Report Charles Crane, President, NSTC i. Main issue deals with awards for upcoming year and understanding process for the William Stead Award. This process was clarified during the call. The Awards Committee will present nominations for this award to the NSTC officers for review and selection. The NSTC will forward their selection to the NTCA officers by the due date for presentation at the annual meeting. ii. NSTC is planning a clinical training in San Antonio next week in conjunction with the North American Meeting of the IUATLD. There are 89 registered participants NTCA Executive Board Conference Call Minutes Page 1
iii. A final agenda has been finalized and provided to Sherry Brown for the NSTC meeting in June. Topics will include pediatrics, TB/HIV, clinical management of drug reactions and surveillance for drug induced hepatitis. Appreciation was expressed for assistance in obtaining travel funding for Bill Burman s presentation iv. A nominating Committee has been established and is in the process of gathering nominations for NSTC offices. v. The NSTC is also working to address changes mandated by the NTCA Board at July meeting. Items being addressed are procedures for amendments to the by-laws, procedures for the William Stead Award and procedures for elections. The group will assure consistency with NTCA By-Laws. This is generally clean up from last year. Proposed revisions will be presented to the NTCA Board no later than April meeting. vi. NSTC is also working on physician survey. This effort is being headed by Ron Karpick. g. Committee/Workgroup Reports i. Awards Committee Peter Davidson and Shea Rabley 1. Results of the recent NTNC awards survey, announcement, nominations form and information about awards committee process were presented and discussed. Only seven responses were received to the survey. Based on the survey, several items were changed including definitions of awards and the renaming of an award to Joe Ware Partner Service Award. Nominations for awards must be received by March 5 th. Charlie Crane, NSTC President, raised questions concerning the process for the selection of the William Stead Award in light of discussion on the issue from last July. Agreement on the process for this year was reached. ii. NTIP Workgroup Nancy Baruch and Jane Moore 1. Reported on attendance on their first attendance at NTIP Workgroup and concerns about activities of the group and ability to have impact on future decision made related to NTIP indicators. Both will report on the next workgroup meeting on the March call. iii. Nominations Committee Update Kathy Moser 1. Jon Warkentin provided the report for Kathy. The nominations process is moving forward and a slate of candidates should be finalized within the next few days. iv. Research and Survey Committee Jon Warkentin 1. The Cure TB survey is moving forward. A pilot of the survey will start in couple of days. The Zoomerang survey will be sent initially 8 jurisdictions. Once the pilot is completed, the survey should quickly move forward. v. Board Retreat Workgroup Jon Warkentin NTCA Executive Board Conference Call Minutes Page 2
III. 1. Jon Warkentin discussed the need for an orientation session for new Board members at the beginning of their term. Several Board members concurred and discussed difficulties in orienting to the issues up for discussion with no background information; areas where new volunteers are needed to carry out the work of the NTCA; the need for clarification of responsibilities of incidence Board members and expectations related to communications with assigned constituent states; and need for orientation to structure of various committees and workgroups. There was discussion of pros and cons of the scheduling of a potential new member orientation. There was also a discussion of the need for a broader discussion of the NTCA sections. A request was made for the Board Retreat to include time devoted to the sections. Information will be solicited from every member of Board as to their individual understanding of their role as a starting point for discussions during the retreat. Invitations for invited attendees for the retreat will be sent next week. vi. Website Workgroup Mike Arbisi 1. The Website Workgroup has met several times. The plan is to come up with a more efficient, modern design that will allow the user to navigate the NTCA web site easier. The workgroup has met with a web designer to discuss ideas and hopes to have the redesign completed by summer. The workgroup will have a more in depth presentation at the March meeting. 2. Recommendation was made by Jon Warkentin to include criteria for the various NTCA awards on the NTCA webs site along with a listing of historical recipients. CDC Discussion a. COA Re-competition Phil Talboy i. Phil Talboy updated the Board on the status of the 2013 application process for the Cooperative Agreements. After completing the TRUST process, two major obstacles were identified to implementing the planned beginning of a new grant cycle in 2013. These are the amount of unobligated funds on books due to issues such as vacant positions and the current July 1 June 30 contract cycle used in some states. These barriers could have resulted in a loss of unobligated funding and a need to fund continuing activities with current funding. A decision has been made not to begin a new cooperative agreement cycle in 2013, but wait until 2015 to begin a new cycle. The new formula distribution will take effect in 2013 as scheduled, however. Kevin Fenton has been briefed on the formula plan and Dr. Friedan will be briefed on February 27 th. Once the plan is finalized and approved by Dr. Friedan, a Dear Colleague letter will be sent out. Program consultants will be working with areas on regarding the contract cycles and the formula redistribution. Currently, NTCA Executive Board Conference Call Minutes Page 3
45% of available COAG funding is distributed according to the formula. The plan is for this to increase to 60% in 2013, 80% in 2014 and 100% in 2017. ii. Dr. Fenton will brief NTCA and STOP TB leadership on the 2013 proposed federal budget. Budget numbers are not final, but a 4.6 million cut is anticipated. DTBE is working on where the cuts will be absorbed and looking internally at position, travel budgets, other personnel items and projects. This will be a 6-8 month process. They are trying to minimize the cuts to COAGs, but they are looking towards some cuts will be necessary. This decrease combined with the formula redistribution will make 2013 difficult. iii. A question was asked about the status of 2012 funding. There will be a 0.89 rescission this year that will be adjusted in the final 24% of funding to be released later this year. More detail will be provided next month iv. Planning well underway for the June conference although, the planning committee is working to fill an entire day that was previously allotted to the new cooperative agreement application process. The theme for this year will be A New Era in TB Management. The opening keynote will be delivered by three former TB patients that have been trained in media by RESULTS that will discuss TB from the patient perspective. Carol Pozsik announced that that NTCA Social Committee is working on the evening social activity. b. NTIP Workgroup Tom Navin i. Presented information on the DTBE charge to the NTIP Workgroup. The Workgroup will function as an advisory group to DTBE on recommendations for improvements in NTIP. The group has been charged with examining each indicator and making recommendations for any changes, additions, deletions that are appropriate. DTBE will make final decisions. ii. Two external members appointed by the NTCA, Nancy Baruch and Jane Moore, attended their first meeting earlier this month. iii. To date, a major focus of the group has been investigating data discrepancies and developing user manuals. DTBE is in the process of preparing a Dear Colleague concerning the manual and an upcoming webinar on data discrepancy findings. This letter should be out in a about week. An online help feature has been developed for the NTIP system and should also be live in about a week. iv. Next step for the workgroup will be to address needed changes in indicators. Currently the group is in the formative phase about developing a plan to address issues. CDC is investing substantial amount of resources in making NTIP better. The process for receiving recommendations for changes will be at the next NTIP workgroup meeting. These may come from representative from the NTCA, others NTCA Executive Board Conference Call Minutes Page 4
IV. partners, program consultants, etc. No changes have been made for 6 years. c. TB LEADS Project (3HP) Christine Ho i. An overview of TB LEADS project on the new 3HP regimen for the treatment of LTBI was presented. The project received a non-research determination as it is part of normal post-marketing surveillance for a new regimen. It will take a two year look at tolerability of the regimen in the real world. The project will focus on the feasibility, cost effectiveness, adverse reactions, completion rates and any unforeseen problems associated with the regimen. Participation was solicited through a query from the Program Consultants. There are 18 sites interested in participating in the project. Funding for the project will not be provided to sites and sites will need to regularly provide data to CDC. CDC will review adverse events weekly to see if patterns that start to emerge sooner information would be available with normal communications. ii. There will be 3 tiers to the project, depending on the amount of information collected by the site basic, standard and comprehensive. A few sites of the sites will travel to Atlanta for planning meeting in several weeks to review draft forms and procedures. Input and feedback on forms and processes will be solicited from all sites. iii. Participating sites represent a lot of populations and include: the federal Bureau of Prisons, a children s hospital in Ohio, as well as sites in Mississippi, California, Arizona, Wisconsin and Kansas among others. Several sites will be treating mainly refugees. Hopefully the project will start in several weeks and information on experiences with the regimen among populations not included in the original study population. Most of those treated in the project will not be contacts. iv. Currently there are18 sites and the project can accommodate up to 27 sites. Next Meeting a. The next meeting is scheduled for March 13, 2012 at 2:00 PM Eastern Time Minutes Submitted by Jane Moore, NTCA Secretary NTCA Executive Board Conference Call Minutes Page 5