Viral Hepatitis National Strategic Plan Overview

What Is the Viral Hepatitis National Strategic Plan?

The Viral Hepatitis Plan provides a framework to eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health threat in the United States by 2030. The Viral Hepatitis Plan focuses on hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and hepatitis C—the three most common hepatitis viruses that have the most impact on the health of the nation. The Plan is necessary as the nation faces unprecedented hepatitis A outbreaks, progress on preventing hepatitis B has stalled, and hepatitis C rates nearly tripled from 2011 to 2018.

The Plan provides goal-oriented objectives and strategies that can be implemented by a broad mix of stakeholders at all levels and across many sectors, both public and private, to reverse the rates of viral hepatitis, prevent new infections, improve care and treatment and ultimately eliminate viral hepatitis as a public health threat in the United States. Stakeholders can use these evidence-based objectives and strategies that are most likely to contribute toward achieving national goals to eliminate the public health threat of viral hepatitis.

Key Elements of the Viral Hepatitis Plan

• Aims to increase uptake of hepatitis vaccination among populations for whom vaccination is recommended, increase access to harm reduction services, substance use treatment and peer navigation and utilize a treatment as prevention approach
• Seeks to implement universal hepatitis C screening guidelines, hepatitis B testing, and linkage to care in a range of settings and expand the capacity of the public health and provider workforce to provide viral hepatitis prevention, testing, care and treatment services
• Seeks to implement strategies and promote policies to enhance collaborative, integrated, patient-centered models of care
• Focuses on opportunities to expand research and development of a hepatitis C vaccine, point of care testing and improved diagnostics and therapeutics. The Plan also focuses on implementation research to put into practice evidence-based interventions, as effective interventions to improve prevention. testing and treatment are identified
• Aims to improve viral hepatitis surveillance data collection, management, and analysis, including interoperability of data and data sharing, to understand the true scope, level of public health threat, and opportunities to address viral hepatitis

Read more about how we developed the Plan with subject matter experts from across the federal government and with input from a wide range of stakeholders including the public.

Download the Viral Hepatitis Plan slide deck.