Letter to Study Participants

Attachment C. Letter to Study Participants

Dear pilot participant,

Thank you for agreeing to pilot test and provide feedback on the draft assessment tool for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Core Elements of Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Programs. Your participation is voluntary, and your input, as a leader of a hospital antibiotic stewardship program, is critical to ensuring that the final assessment tool reflects the realities of these programs in various hospital settings.

The specific purpose of this pilot test is to obtain input that will help the CDC to identify 1) necessary changes to wording or format to ensure clarity and consistent interpretation of items; and; and 2) necessary changes to the assessment content to ensure relevance and importance to intended respondents. Findings from the study will be used, in conjunction with input from CDC subject matter experts, to refine the assessment tool and develop a scoring mechanism for the tool. The final tool will be implemented via CDC’s National Healthcare Surveillance Network (NHSN) Annual Hospital Survey.

This pilot test consists of two steps:

1. Complete the draft Hospital Antibiotic Stewardship Core Element Assessment for your facility as you would if you were officially reporting data to NHSN.

2. Respond to a set of feedback questions following completion of the assessment. It may be helpful to review the feedback questions prior to completing the assessment in case you would like to note any issues while completing the assessment.

Please provide honest and detailed feedback. No personally identifiable information will be collected, and data will be analyzed and presented in such a way that no individual respondent or hospital will be identifiable.

In order to ensure that your feedback can be used to improve the assessment, please provide your completed assessment along with responses to the feedback questions **by date** [date will be entered upon receipt of OMB approval] to zdu5@cdc.gov. If you have any additional comments that you would like to provide verbally, or if you have any questions, feel free to contact Anita McLees at 404-498-0316 or zdu5@cdc.gov.

Sincerely,

Dr. Arjun Srinivasan
Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

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