Program response

Response to comments

Thank you for your comments and recommendations on Proposed Data Collection: “Prevent Hepatitis Transmission Among Persons Who Inject Drugs;” Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Docket No. CDC-2015-0047. We seriously consider your comments and would like to assure you that we have deliberated thoroughly on the issued you raised prior to submission for review. Our survey is mainly focused on obtaining data from young PWID who are affected by this emerging epidemic of HCV infection. We aimed to have shorter burden hours to get as good data as possible from this possibly difficult population and to that effect we decided not to ask detailed sexual questions as done in other surveys.

Comment 1: As you know HCV is not efficiently transmitted by sexual route and the current HCV epidemic is mainly among persons who inject prescription/nonprescription drugs. The survey did not ask detailed sexual questions to be interpreted along with sexual orientation or preference. We therefore believe asking this question without asking additional questions putting person at risk for other infections (HIV,HBV) may not be helpful.

Comment 2: We specifically focused on the transition from addictive prescription medications to street drug use. Therefore, we didn’t include use of other agents like hormones that have no association with transition to street drug use. However, our survey form allows for collection of any injection if the interviewee volunteers to provide that information.

Comment 3: As mentioned above for comment 1, this survey is mainly focused on injection drug use as risk factor for HCV infection and it does not delve in the details of sexual behaviors.

Comment 4: The Prevent Hepatitis Transmission Among Persons Who Inject Drugs is a comprehensive strategy which will collect information including hepatitis B serostatus. Serologic testing for hepatitis B virus provides information including susceptibility, infection and immune status. We believe most of our young PWID participants would have been vaccinated for hepatitis B during childhood or as a catch up. We also realize responses to hepatitis B testing and vaccination questions are not very reliable, we therefore are looking to fill that information by the serologic testing. Furthermore, the sites ill search the state immunization registry for HBV vaccination history and will collaborate with the health department to get them vaccinated, if needed.

We really appreciate your comments and hope that we have addressed your concerns appropriately. Thank you!