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Abstract

School nurses actively monitor the school population for signs of communicable disease on a daily basis. State regulations outline reportable diseases and provide guidance to control disease outbreak, including management of disease outbreak in the school setting. The purpose of this article is to review strategies recently used in managing a tuberculosis (TB) outbreak at a large high school in Kansas. A timeline of events is presented along with a discussion of the differences between latent TB infection and TB disease. Partnering across agencies and departments enabled the timely testing of over 400 individuals and subsequent management of individuals testing positive for latent TB infection. Public information officers provided necessary guidance to communicate to audiences both internally and externally.

Keywords

tuberculosis TB disease latent TB infection school surveillance school health partners

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References

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10.

Lawlor

Griffin

Johnson

May

Province

Shemwell

Tausz

(2015, June). ‘Berc in the ‘Burbs: Contact investigation of a high school student with tuberculosis disease, Johnson County, Kansas 2015. Paper presented at the National Tuberculosis Conference.

11.

U.S. Preventive Services Task Force. (2014, July). Draft research plan. Tuberculosis infection: Screening. Retrieved from http://www.uspreventiveservicestaskforce.org/Page/Document/draft-research-plan152/tuberculosis-infection-screening

Too Busy for TB

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