StopTB Initiative Advancing the End of Tuberculosis in America

StopTB Initiative

Advancing the End of Tuberculosis in America

Latest Articles

Scattered, Siloed, and Lost: The Case for a Portable TB Screening Record Every American Can Own
Patient Education & Public Health

Scattered, Siloed, and Lost: The Case for a Portable TB Screening Record Every American Can Own

Millions of Americans have undergone tuberculosis screening at some point in their lives, yet those results exist in disconnected systems that neither patients nor providers can reliably access. Without a portable, patient-controlled TB screening history, the American healthcare system continues to repeat tests unnecessarily while simultaneously missing critical gaps in protection. The solution may already exist in models developed abroad — if the US can find the will to adopt them.
The Clinic on the Corner Is Missing Tuberculosis: Urgent Care's Unexamined Role in America's TB Crisis
Investigative Health Reporting

The Clinic on the Corner Is Missing Tuberculosis: Urgent Care's Unexamined Role in America's TB Crisis

For tens of millions of Americans, an urgent care center or walk-in clinic is not a backup option — it is their primary point of contact with the healthcare system. Yet these facilities, which now outnumber hospital emergency departments in many US cities, operate almost entirely without standardized tuberculosis screening protocols. As TB rates climb in urban and suburban communities alike, the nation's most accessible healthcare venues remain among its most significant diagnostic blind spots.
The Gap Nobody Tracks: How Positive TB Tests Disappear Into a System That Was Never Designed to Follow Up
Investigative Health Reporting

The Gap Nobody Tracks: How Positive TB Tests Disappear Into a System That Was Never Designed to Follow Up

A positive tuberculosis test should be the beginning of a clinical response — but for thousands of Americans each year, it becomes the end of the trail. Between the moment a result is recorded and the moment a patient actually begins treatment, a series of systemic failures conspire to let cases vanish. This investigation examines the broken communication pathways, overwhelmed public health departments, and structural blind spots that allow positive TB findings to go unaddressed for weeks, month
Waiting for an Answer That Takes Too Long: The Diagnostic Infrastructure Crisis Quietly Costing TB Patients Their Health
Investigative Health Reporting

Waiting for an Answer That Takes Too Long: The Diagnostic Infrastructure Crisis Quietly Costing TB Patients Their Health

Across wide stretches of the United States, hospitals still lack the molecular diagnostic technology necessary to confirm tuberculosis within a single day — a gap that has direct, measurable consequences for both individual patients and community transmission. This investigation examines the systemic failures behind delayed TB diagnosis, the regions most affected, and what health systems must do to close the divide before more lives are lost.
Recovery Without a Safety Net: The Dangerous Absence of TB Screening Inside America's Addiction Treatment Centers
Investigative Health Reporting

Recovery Without a Safety Net: The Dangerous Absence of TB Screening Inside America's Addiction Treatment Centers

Addiction treatment facilities across the United States are welcoming patients in acute medical vulnerability while systematically overlooking one of the oldest infectious diseases in human history. Tuberculosis thrives in the exact conditions these programs create — shared sleeping quarters, compromised immune systems, and high residential turnover — yet TB screening remains absent from most standard intake protocols. This investigation examines why substance use disorder programs must urgently
No Address, No Record, No Treatment: How America's Shelter System Is Losing the Fight Against Tuberculosis
Investigative Health Reporting

No Address, No Record, No Treatment: How America's Shelter System Is Losing the Fight Against Tuberculosis

Across the United States, homeless shelters have become quiet incubators for tuberculosis transmission, where crowded sleeping quarters, fractured care systems, and the absence of standardized screening protocols allow the disease to spread undetected for months. Without a permanent address, many individuals cycle through shelters, emergency rooms, and the streets — carrying active or latent TB into every environment they enter. This investigation examines why the infrastructure designed to prot
Months Between Exposure and Answer: The Geographic Crisis in American TB Diagnostics
Investigative Health Reporting

Months Between Exposure and Answer: The Geographic Crisis in American TB Diagnostics

Across wide swaths of rural and underserved America, patients suspected of tuberculosis infection routinely wait four to eight weeks for confirmatory test results—delays that allow transmission to continue and treatment to stall. A combination of centralized laboratory processing, vanishing local infrastructure, and chronic funding shortfalls has carved diagnostic deserts into the national TB response. This investigation maps those gaps and examines the decentralized rapid-testing models that ex
Cleared to Enter, Free to Spread: The Dangerous Gaps in America's Immigrant TB Screening System
Investigative Health Reporting

Cleared to Enter, Free to Spread: The Dangerous Gaps in America's Immigrant TB Screening System

Tens of thousands of immigrants arrive in the United States each year having passed mandatory tuberculosis screenings that were never designed to catch every active case. An investigative examination reveals how outdated testing protocols, fragmented follow-up systems, and bureaucratic delays are allowing infectious TB to enter American communities undetected, with consequences that extend far beyond the individuals who slip through.
Investigative Health Reporting

Broken Links: How Fragile Drug Supply Chains Are Leaving TB Patients Without Medication Mid-Treatment

When tuberculosis medication runs out mid-regimen, patients face outcomes far worse than a delayed prescription refill — incomplete treatment fuels drug resistance and increases transmission risk. An investigation into America's tuberculosis drug supply chain reveals systemic vulnerabilities rooted in manufacturing consolidation, distribution inequities, and federal oversight gaps that are quietly undermining decades of public health progress.
Data Rich, Action Poor: Why America's Tuberculosis Response Is Failing to Harness the Social Determinants It Already Knows
Investigative Health Reporting

Data Rich, Action Poor: Why America's Tuberculosis Response Is Failing to Harness the Social Determinants It Already Knows

American health systems collect mountains of data on housing instability, food insecurity, and transportation barriers—yet this intelligence rarely shapes TB clinical decisions or resource deployment. A growing number of pioneering health systems are beginning to change that, using social determinants data to predict outbreaks, personalize prevention, and force policy accountability. The gap between what we know and what we do may be costing lives.
Hidden in Plain Sight: How Behavioral Health Clinics Are Failing to Catch Tuberculosis in America's Most Vulnerable Patients
Investigative Health Reporting

Hidden in Plain Sight: How Behavioral Health Clinics Are Failing to Catch Tuberculosis in America's Most Vulnerable Patients

Patients seeking care for depression, anxiety, and substance use disorders frequently carry elevated tuberculosis risk—yet most behavioral health facilities lack any standardized protocol for TB screening at intake. This investigation examines the structural and cultural gaps separating two public health crises that share the same patient population, and what integrated care models could mean for ending TB transmission in America.
Expecting the Unexpected: How Tuberculosis Hides in Plain Sight During Pregnancy and the First Year of Life
Patient Education & Public Health

Expecting the Unexpected: How Tuberculosis Hides in Plain Sight During Pregnancy and the First Year of Life

Tuberculosis poses a profound but frequently unrecognized threat to pregnant women and their newborns across the United States, yet obstetric training rarely equips providers to identify it. From vertical transmission risks to the diagnostic challenges of TB disease during pregnancy, the gaps in maternal health protocols are leaving two of the most vulnerable populations unprotected. Integrating TB awareness into standard prenatal and postnatal care is no longer optional — it is a public health

Blind Spots in the Endocrinology Clinic: Why Diabetes Specialists Must Become the Next Line of Defense Against Tuberculosis
Investigative Health Reporting

Blind Spots in the Endocrinology Clinic: Why Diabetes Specialists Must Become the Next Line of Defense Against Tuberculosis

Patients with diabetes face two to three times the tuberculosis risk of the general population, yet most endocrinologists receive little to no training in TB detection. As America's diabetes epidemic continues to expand, a critical screening gap is quietly allowing tuberculosis to progress unnoticed inside specialty clinics never designed to catch it.
What Medical Schools Forgot to Teach: How a Generation of American Physicians Is Missing Tuberculosis in Plain Sight
Investigative Health Reporting

What Medical Schools Forgot to Teach: How a Generation of American Physicians Is Missing Tuberculosis in Plain Sight

Tuberculosis has quietly disappeared from the core training of American medical students, even as the disease resurfaces in communities across the country. This investigation reveals how shrinking classroom hours, outdated assumptions, and competing curricular demands have produced a generation of physicians ill-equipped to recognize one of history's most persistent infectious diseases. The consequences for patients — and for public health — are only beginning to surface.
Small Patients, Overlooked Diagnoses: Closing the Tuberculosis Detection Gap in American Pediatric Care
Patient Education & Public Health

Small Patients, Overlooked Diagnoses: Closing the Tuberculosis Detection Gap in American Pediatric Care

Childhood tuberculosis in the United States is frequently missed or delayed due to nonspecific symptoms, limited clinician experience, and inconsistent screening protocols in pediatric settings. The consequences extend beyond individual patients, creating silent reservoirs of infection within families and communities. This article examines the diagnostic challenges unique to children and outlines evidence-based steps pediatricians can take to improve early detection.
Revolving Doors and Rising Risk: How America's Pretrial Jails Are Quietly Spreading Tuberculosis Into the Community
Investigative Health Reporting

Revolving Doors and Rising Risk: How America's Pretrial Jails Are Quietly Spreading Tuberculosis Into the Community

America's pretrial detention facilities—where the unconvicted wait, often for weeks or months, in dangerously overcrowded conditions—have become overlooked incubators for tuberculosis transmission. Unlike prisons, these jails operate with little standardized health infrastructure, creating a silent pipeline that carries TB from cells into neighborhoods. This investigation examines what public health officials, defense attorneys, and detention health workers know, and what policymakers continue t
Around the Clock Against an Ancient Disease: How 24/7 TB Diagnostic Hubs Are Closing the Gap Between Exposure and Treatment
Investigative Health Reporting

Around the Clock Against an Ancient Disease: How 24/7 TB Diagnostic Hubs Are Closing the Gap Between Exposure and Treatment

In a handful of American cities, tuberculosis testing no longer stops when the workday ends. A new generation of round-the-clock diagnostic facilities is compressing the timeline between exposure and treatment initiation — and early patient outcomes data suggests the model may be one of the most consequential operational innovations in domestic TB control in decades.
Neighbors as Healers: The Quiet Power of Community Health Workers in America's Fight Against Tuberculosis
Patient Education & Public Health

Neighbors as Healers: The Quiet Power of Community Health Workers in America's Fight Against Tuberculosis

Across underserved American neighborhoods, a growing corps of community health workers is achieving what clinic-based medicine often cannot: reaching TB patients where they live, speaking their language, and guiding them through the full arc of treatment. Yet chronic underfunding and a persistent lack of professional recognition threaten to dismantle one of public health's most effective tools in the effort to end tuberculosis in the United States.
Priced Out of Prevention: How America's Insurance Patchwork Is Keeping TB Screening Out of Reach
Investigative Health Reporting

Priced Out of Prevention: How America's Insurance Patchwork Is Keeping TB Screening Out of Reach

Millions of Americans at elevated risk for tuberculosis are going unscreened not because testing is unavailable, but because their insurance coverage makes it effectively inaccessible. A growing body of evidence reveals that prior authorization requirements, fragmented state-level policies, and coverage exclusions are quietly undermining the nation's tuberculosis control efforts—often with fatal consequences.
Investigative Health Reporting

Breathless and Overlooked: How America's Emergency Rooms Are Missing Tuberculosis in Plain Sight

Across the United States, patients with active tuberculosis are walking into emergency departments, receiving treatments for other conditions, and walking back out—still infectious, still undiagnosed. A systemic failure in ER screening protocols is allowing one of the world's oldest infectious diseases to slip through the cracks of the country's most critical care settings. This investigation examines the clinical blind spots, institutional pressures, and human costs behind the TB testing gap in