Dr. Amy Lansky
Appearances
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
Amy, you might want to take a stab at that. Yeah, thank you. I think that when you look at the... level of evidence. So the strong level of evidence or the sufficient level of evidence. I would say that is the way the task force has examined the evidence and looked at the strength of the recommendation. But from an implementation standpoint, from a community standpoint, when they come
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
to the community guide and they're looking for an intervention to use in their community or their health system. If it's recommended, it's recommended and is good for use. And it's a level, the strong and sufficient are more reflective of the body of evidence that stands behind the recommendation. And that's important from a standpoint of how the task force operates.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
But from a perspective of using the community guide, I think a recommendation is a recommendation and they're useful and it's a trustworthy resource for communities to use.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
Can I add one piece about that, Clarence? Because, you know, I would not want you to walk away and say, I'm an urban community. This intervention is not for me. What we're saying is what we know from the evidence was mostly conducted in suburban and rural areas, but not entirely. And if we had evidence to say, we don't think this will work in urban areas, we would say so.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
So it's more a matter of this is an intervention that's shown to prevent substance use among youth, and we know more about its use in suburban and rural areas But I wouldn't want people to interpret that as meaning it's not effective or should not be used in urban areas.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
Yeah, thanks, Alison. So our relationship at the Community Guide Program runs across CDC. So we always have program partners who we're working with on the systematic reviews. And the relationship with the funding announcements can come both on the front end and the back end. And so the substance use interventions we were talking about is a good example
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
where the Division of Overdose Prevention at CDC was interested in community interventions to offer as part of their support of the Drug-Free Communities Program. And so we've been working together to identify a series of interventions to do the reviews, to have the task force examine and make a recommendation if appropriate.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
And then those would go into the portfolio of interventions that that drug free communities program can choose from. I think a second example where it's a little more on the back end is the recent funding for the prevention research centers, which are a group funded across the nation in universities doing a wide variety of prevention research.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
And part of their focus in their current funding cycle is on implementation research. And so in their funding announcement, it was included a number of community guide task force recommended interventions where they could choose from that list to propose an intervention to expand the implementation science.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
So it's all very tied in to be sure that what the task force is working on, that the recommendations they make are going to be used and are going to be supported whenever possible through funding announcements.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
And so the task force definitely wants to be responsive and relevant to what's going on in the field of public health. And so one of the things, one example from COVID is we put together the task force recommended interventions that might be useful to communities that are addressing COVID.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
And so this included interventions to increase vaccination, and they weren't specific to COVID vaccines, but they might be useful in that setting. We promoted a number of interventions around cancer screening because we quickly learned that people were, kind of falling off their routine preventive screenings. And so promoting ways to increase that.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
And then a number of mental health interventions as well. And so we pulled together the information that we had that we thought would be useful
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
And what we're doing now is beginning to look at what were the actions that were implemented during COVID for which the evidence, the evaluations of those programs are starting to be published and we can come together and do the systematic reviews and the task force can deliberate and make recommendations for things that might be useful in future outbreaks or during respiratory virus season.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
Amy. Amy. I want to say thank you so much for having us on and for the opportunity to talk with you about the Community Preventive Services Task Force and the Community Guide. And I will put in a plug and say for people who want to keep up to date with what the task force is recommending, there's an account through social media on X. It's at CPSTF.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
You can follow the community guide through CDC's LinkedIn account. And I think most importantly, you can sign up for updates on the community guide website to receive email notifications about new recommendations and findings every time they're released. So great to keep up with what the task force is doing because it's always changing and always adding new recommendations. Thanks.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
Sure, I can start off and then I'm sure Allison and Tom can chime in. So the Community Preventive Services Task Force was started in 1996. It was stood up by the Department of Health and Human Services. And the charge to the task force was to review population health interventions and identify what works for public health.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
And this was set up and the oversight for the task force, the support was charged to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And so CDC has been supporting the task force continuously since that time task force members come on and off the task force. And the community guide is currently the website.
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
It's the product that is a compilation of all the task force recommendations and findings regarding a variety of population health interventions. And currently the community guide is comprised of around 250 recommended interventions across 20 public health topics. Alison, you want to add to that?
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
Yeah, thanks, Alison. I will also add that the relationship between the community guide and healthy people is also reflected in both of their websites. So if you go to the community guide website, you'll see the relevant Healthy People objectives listed for each intervention that the task force recommends. And likewise, if you go to the Healthy People website, healthypeople.gov,
Health Chatter
Preventive Services Task Force Community Guide
you can look for an objective and it will give examples from the community guide of effective interventions that implement in your community to help reach those healthy people targets. And so they're very cross-connected and have been really since the implementation of the task force.