StopAnthrax™ Jurisdictional Pilot Test
Procedures for the Collection of Information to Obtain User Satisfaction Feedback
This document addresses the following information about the information collection request titled StopAnthrax™ Text Messaging Program Pilot Test – User Satisfaction Feedback Collection:
Background and Overview
Goals
Methods of Data Collection
Privacy and Confidentiality
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Healthcare Preparedness Activity (HPA), in collaboration with the Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU) Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education (ORISE), developed the StopAnthrax™ text messaging program (hereafter referred to as StopAnthrax™) to be activated following an anthrax incident in the United States. For the purposes of this program, an anthrax incident, whether through bioterrorism or other form of emergency, is defined as cutaneous, gastrointestinal, injection, or inhalation transmission.
The focus of StopAnthrax™ is on medical countermeasures (MCMs) that most likely will be distributed to communities following an anthrax incident—ciprofloxacin, doxycycline, amoxicillin, and Anthrax Vaccine Adsorbed (AVA). Once distributed, these MCMs will be dispensed to individuals who were in or near the affected areas at points of dispensing (PODs) to be stood up within the community.
StopAnthrax™ is intended for adults, parents, and pregnant women who receive anthrax MCMs from points of dispensing (PODs) for themselves and/or their children. It is a stand-alone, bidirectional program which provides text messages to those enrolled for up to 60 days, the recommended length of time for postexposure prophylaxis (PEP) for anthrax. The purpose of this program is to use text messages to encourage MCM adherence and reporting of adverse drug events to existing surveillance systems, direct those experiencing anthrax or MCM-related adverse event symptoms to seek medical attention, and provide relevant health education to those enrolled in the program.
During an incident, affected jurisdictions will stand up PODs and use posters, flyers, and enrollment cards designed by CDC to advertise the text messaging program to people coming through the PODs. People will have the opportunity to enroll themselves by texting a shortcode (i.e., a word, phrase, or short series of numbers) to a phone number to be specified by the vendor.
Representatives from the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, Division of Public Health expressed interest in the StopAnthrax™ program after attending a CDC-HPA presentation at the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) Preparedness Summit in April 2015 and participating in the National Public Health Information Coalition's (NPHIC) review of the Anthrax Communication Toolkit in December 2015. CDC-HPA contacted representatives from the Illinois Department of Public Health after discussions with the state's Division of State and Local Readiness (DSLR) Project Officer about the upcoming Illinois anthrax exercise.
Representatives from both state’s health departments expressed a desire to incorporate and pilot test StopAnthrax™ enrollment and the first 10 days of the program into their existing exercises. Both states are conducting full-scale POD exercises for an anthrax incident in June. CDC-HPA is working closely with these jurisdictions to advise the jurisdictions on the implementation of the program into their exercises.
CDC-HPA has contracted with ORAU to assist with a larger initiative to assist jurisdictions with the implementation of StopAnthrax™ into their POD exercises in order to test the program. ORAU will also work with CDC-HPA to design, and implement the proposed information collection.
The purpose of this proposed information collection is to take advantage of the opportunity to collect user feedback from POD exercise participants about the StopAnthrax™ program in order to improve the program.
Jurisdictions will provide information about the StopAnthrax™ pilot test and the proposed information collection to their POD exercise participants during their pre-exercise briefings. Information will be collected from 660 exercise participants through an online survey following the exercise. Information will also be collected from 40 jurisdictional planning committee (JPC) members and participating local health departments (LHDs)’ exercise staff through an online facilitated discussion using ThinkTank™1.
The proposed information collection has the following goals:
Identify potential issues or barriers to enrolling in StopAnthrax™ from a user's (local health department and participant) perspective.
Identify potential issues or barriers to participating in StopAnthrax™ from a user's perspective.
Collect users' opinions on StopAnthrax™ messaging.
CDC-HPA will provide each jurisdiction an informational PowerPoint presentation to incorporate into their own pre-exercise briefing (see attachment: StopAnthrax Pilot Test Briefing Slides). During the briefing, exercise staff will inform participants of the opportunity to participate in the StopAnthrax™ pilot test and proposed information collection. Up to 660 full-scale exercise participants will be able to enroll in the StopAnthrax™ program and be eligible to complete the survey following the exercise. Health department staff will hang or otherwise display provided posters with instructions for enrollment for all participants to see (see attachment: StopAnthrax Pilot Test Posters2). All exercise participants who enrolled in StopAnthrax™ (including those who opted-out or otherwise did not complete the 10-day protocol) will receive a final text message asking them to provide feedback through an online survey.
Final Text Message: Thank you for participating in the pilot test! Please provide feedback in the next 5 days: (link to survey)
The survey will consist of 14 questions (see attachment: Participant Pilot Test Survey), and should take no more than 30 minutes to complete. Respondents may include first responders, health department and hospital staff, Medical Reserve Corps volunteers, and volunteers from the general public.
Participation in the information collection, including time spent reading/responding to StopAnthrax™text messages, reading instructions/information about the information collection during the exercise briefing and accessing and completing the online survey, is expected to take no longer than 1 hour for each respondent. Once information has been collected from 660 respondents, the survey will be closed and any additional participants wishing to participate in the information collection will receive a notification upon accessing the survey link that the information collection period has closed. All participants will be given contact information for someone involved in the information collection in the event they have any questions or concerns about their participation.
Following each jurisdiction’s full-scale exercise, CDC-HPA and ORAU will schedule and conduct a one-hour ThinkTank™ session with 40 JPC and participating LHDs' exercise staff involved in the implementation of StopAnthrax™ into their exercises to gather additional feedback about the user enrollment experience. ORAU will facilitate the session, and LHDs will be asked to describe their observations from the day of the POD exercise (see attachment: Jurisdiction ThinkTank™ Session). Respondents will be recruited for the discussion through email. Participation in the information collection is expected to take no longer than 1 hour for each JPC and LHD exercise staff respondent.
None of the information being collected is of a personal or sensitive nature. Participation in the information collection is completely voluntary. The focus of the information collection is to obtain opinions about participating in the StopAnthrax™ program during the full-scale exercise in order to improve the program for use during an actual anthrax incident. CDC-HPA and ORAU will not collect any identifiable information from survey respondents. Names and email addresses will be collected from the JPC and LHD exercise staff in order to recruit respondents for the online ThinkTank™ discussion. CDC-HPA and ORAU will not collect personal information as part of the information collection. Additionally, data will only be accessible by CDC-HPA and ORAU staff and any information communicated by respondents will not be associated with any particular individual’s name or phone number in any reports or other materials produced by ORAU or CDC. Data collected by the proposed information collection will only be used for the purposes of program improvement. There are no plans to publish the findings from the collection.
1 ThinkTank collaboration software transforms the way people work together, enabling leaders to realize extraordinary results from their teams. . . Organizations like Procter & Gamble, FMC Technologies, and NASA have used ThinkTank to radically accelerate innovation, enhance operations, and solve their toughest problems. (From http://thinktank.net/about/)
2 Each participating health department will pick up to 3 posters to use at their location from the original 9. Although these posters have the draft watermark, they will be the final version participants will see during the exercise. Participants will be briefed that these are just drafts which will likely change as the program develops.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Mattson, Kristin |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2021-01-26 |