Express Tuberculosis Control Laws in Selected U.S. Jurisdictions: A Report to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Tuberculosis (TB), a serious communicable disease, remains a significant public health threat in the United States despite long-standing public health prevention efforts at various levels of government. TB control has become an increasingly crucial concern with the emergence of multi-drug resistant TB (MDR-TB) and extensively drug-resistant TB (XDR-TB). Legal preparedness and its core elements are central to ensuring the success of public health efforts to control the spread of TB. To assist public health practitioners and policy makers in assessing and improving the use of law as a tool to control TB, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in 2007 initiated a series of applied research and development projects: (1) a review and characterization of select jurisdictions’ express TB control laws; (2) creation of a handbook on TB control laws that local, state, and tribal public health practitioners can use to improve their understanding of those laws and competency in applying them; and (3) development of a model state TB control act (specifically suggested by the Advisory Committee on the Elimination of Tuberculosis (ACET)). This report and accompanying Tables prepared by the Centers for Law and the Public Health: A Collaborative at Johns Hopkins and Georgetown Universities (Center) address the first of these projects

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