Topic Collection: Implementation and Scale-up of Tuberculosis Preventive Treatment

Jonathon R. Campbell McGill University Montreal, Canada orcid.org/0000-0003-2341-2166

Rovina Ruslami Padjadjaran University Bandung, Indonesia orcid.org/0000-0003-4995-5054

Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death due to a single infectious disease globally. Its persistence is driven by ongoing transmission of tuberculosis from people with infectious tuberculosis disease and by progression of (latent) tuberculosis infection to infectious tuberculosis disease. The WHO has called on countries to prioritize closing diagnostic gaps in tuberculosis detection and treatment and scale-up treatment of tuberculosis infection—so called, tuberculosis preventive treatment (TPT)—to help reduce the tuberculosis burden and mitigate the morbidity and mortality it causes. Yet, TPT remains severely underutilized globally. While implementation and scale-up has been successful among people living with HIV, a group at high-risk for tuberculosis disease, it has been poor among household contacts of people with tuberculosis disease—another group at very high-risk for tuberculosis disease who number >40 million annually. Between 2018 and 2022, less than 3 million household contacts received TPT—an intervention that can reduce TB disease risk by 70-90%. Improving the implementation and scale up of TPT is essential to eliminating this disease. The Topic Collection will cover recent advances in TPT implementation and scale-up, particularly those conducted in high tuberculosis burden countries and those focused on household contacts. The methodological scope of submissions is broad, and we welcome original research articles utilizing qualitative approaches, implementation science, modelling and economic evaluation, and evidence synthesis (e.g., meta-analysis), as well as cohort studies and clinical trials. Topics that would be of great interest:

• The cost-effectiveness and budget impact of TPT scale-up
• Feasibility and acceptability of approaches to implement and scale-up TPT, particularly those in primary care
• Qualitative research highlighting barriers and facilitators to TPT implementation and scale-up among patients, providers, and policy-makers
• Mixed-methods research leveraging before-and-after designs to evaluate the impact of interventions to implement and/or scale-up TPT
• Cluster randomized trials or prospective studies evaluating interventions that can impact TPT uptake

Please see the instructions for authors for submission requirements for each article type. To submit your article, please follow these instructions and select `Implementation and Scale-up of Tuberculosis Preventative Treatment’ as the Topic Collection.   Please visit our author hub for more information about the benefits of submitting to a Topic Collection. All submitted articles will be subject to the journal's normal peer review process. The Editor in Chief is responsible for the content of this Topic Collection. Guest Editors will manage peer review, invite reviewers and make a recommendation, but the final decision on all manuscripts will be made by the Editor-in-Chief. Articles accepted for publication will be published upon acceptance. Visit our author hub for more information regarding the publication process for topic collections.  Authors submitting to this Topic Collection are entitled to a 25% discount on the Article Processing Charge.  Discount is available upon request to info.bmjresp@bmj.com. A number of institutions have an open access agreement with BMJ where the full cost of publishing can be covered; please view the list of institutions to which this applies. BMJ also offers full waivers for authors based in low income countries; please see further information on our waivers and discounts policy. For any inquiries regarding this topic collection, please contact topic.collections@bmj.com. Keywords: tuberculosis; prevention and control; primary prevention; communicable diseases; implementation science; latent tuberculosis; therapeutics; rifapentine; isoniazid; rifampin; tuberculin test; HIV