In 2020, the San Francisco Department of Public Health decided to undertake a needs assessment to help develop a plan to identify and prevent perinatal transmission of hepatitis C virus in San Francisco. While there have been no cases of infants born with HCV reported to the health department to date, there are data to suggest some infections are occurring undetected.
Facente Consulting was hired to conduct the needs assessment, and reviewed models of perinatal HCV programming in Philadelphia, New York City, and Kentucky, in addition to interviewing almost two dozen key stakeholders to inform the recommendations. Eleven formal recommendations were provided to the San Francisco Department of Public Health in the final report; key themes included increasing community provider awareness around perinatal HCV, improving screening and care of pregnant people with HCV, increasing efforts to retroactively identify undiagnosed pediatric cases of HCV, identifying and treating people living with HCV who have the capacity to become pregnant, and encouraging studies of HCV treatment for pregnant people.