In-Person Interview Invitation Email

Attachment L:-In-Person Interview Invitation Email

Subject: YOUR INPUT REQUEST: Assessment of CDC’s STD Clinical Partnerships

Body:

Dear Colleague:

The Cloudburst Group, with funding and support from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention (DSTDP), and with the support of the National Coalition of STD Directors (NCSD) and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), are conducting a new two-part project to assess the value, need, gaps, and impact of strategic partnerships between territorial and local health departments (LHD) with the highest STD morbidity (syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea) and their STD clinical partners. DSTDP has contracted with The Cloudburst Group to conduct the assessment in an unbiased manner.

As a major component of that assessment we are reaching out to ask you to join a group of fifteen jurisdictions who have been selected to participate in individual in-person interviews. You were selected because of your work with STD clinical partners. Participation in this assessment is voluntary. We anticipate that the STD program manager and STD program coordinator interviews will each take approximately 60 minutes to complete and data manager/ epidemiologist interviews will take approximately 40 minutes to complete. We are hoping to conduct the interview by DATE.

The individual discussion for STD program managers and staff will cover:

• Context of partnership selection criteria and development

• Relationship between partnership selection and budget cuts

• Examples of how partner resources are utilized to address STD clinical gaps

• Actual STD clinical partnership outcomes

• STD clinical partnership effectiveness

• Barriers to developing and maintaining STD clinical partnerships

• Essential components of STD clinical partnerships in practice

• Additional partners needed

The individual discussion for the data managers will cover:

• Data collection and management at your organization related to STD screening and treatment

• Effect budget cuts on STD prevention data collection and management

• Importance of STD clinical partners identified in assessment

• Completeness of the STD positivity and treatment data from partners

• Partner-specific data sharing guidelines, procedures, protocols

• Data collection and extraction barriers

• Data analysis with top three STD clinical partners

• Utilization of partner data to inform program planning or implementation

If you are able to participate, please provide us with a date that we can come for an in-person visit to conduct the interview. As part of our visit, we like to speak with two of your STD program coordinators who are knowledgeable of your STD clinical partnerships and one of your data managers/epidemiologists who work with STD clinical partner data. We would like to visit your program on a day that is convenient for you and the identified staff.

The information that we gather and summarize will be used to provide insight on the partnerships that STD programs have sought and maintained to assure STD clinical services and inform partner engagement, guidance and case studies for STD programs nationwide on how to develop effective partnerships to further STD prevention and control goals.

Thank you in advance for your assistance in helping us gather information and please do not hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have.

Dr. Steven Sullivan

Senior Project Director

[email protected]

301-385-6693