Att G_Notification Email to Respondent

Attachment G. Notification Email to Respondent

XDR TB Contact Investigation: A Cost Assessment

Dear Colleague

I am a research fellow at the CDC conducting an assessment of the cost of the contact investigation that occurred in response to the arrival of the patient with XDR TB in April 2015, who had contact with people across 14 states. This study is expected to be useful to document the costs to state and local health departments of the contact investigation, as well as to aid in planning for and determining the cost of future contact investigations. Your participation is voluntary, although without it, uncertainty and doubt about the value of contact investigations may persist, hindering efforts to most efficiently eliminate tuberculosis in the United States.

Recently, I spoke with the TB Controller in your state to ask for permission to work with you to collect essential data for these calculations. This evaluation involves four steps: identifying the resources that were necessary to conduct the investigation (e.g. personnel time, number of tests administered, travel expenses, etc.), quantifying units actually consumed, valuing the cost of each, and determining the total cost of the investigation.

The process will involve either on one or two respondents, depending on how your office chooses to distribute responsibility. Activities include reviewing instructions, gathering data, transmitting findings, and validating results. We anticipate two telephone calls per respondent; one to collect or review your data, and a second to validate your data against those from the other jurisdictions involved.

1. Reviewing instructions (1 hour per respondent)

2. Collecting data (1.5 hours for main respondent, 30 minutes for the second)

3. Phone call to transmit findings (1 hour for main interview, 30 minutes for second)

4. Phone call to validate results (20 minutes per respondent with variation depending on the number of questions)

Please find attached a spreadsheet that outlines the elements that we have identified through research and previous experience, accompanied by a set of instructions describing what we need in more detail. Please review these materials. If we have not included any essential elements that may have an important impact on results, please add them.

Soon, we will be arranging a telephone call to collect data, which will be safeguarded on a password protected CDC computer. You have the option to complete the spreadsheet prior to the phone interview, or have the data ready in another way to tell me what to enter onto my spreadsheet during our interview.

If you need clarification about what any of the questions mean or what is needed, please do not hesitate to contact us (Samuel Shillcutt at 404-718-8963 [email protected], or Suzanne Marks at [email protected]). We would request that you contact us by (date TBD after decision by OMB) to set up a call to record the data that you have collected. Thank you very much for your collaboration!

Thank you for any help that you can offer.

Best regards

Sam Shillcutt