Estimating the Likely Public Health Impact of Partner Notification for a Clinical Service: An Evidence-Based Algorithm

Abstract

PN that targets casual partners, rather than regular or live-in partners, prevents more secondary transmissions per partnership; it is also more resource intensive, but the public health benefit is greater.

Effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of traditional and new partner notification technologies for curable sexually transmitted infections: observational study, systematic reviews and mathematical modelling

“…The development of the methods used has been described in detail. 9 Here we applied the methods using audit data collected for this project about patients diagnosed with chlamydia study at one genitourinary medicine clinic in England, and estimates of C. trachomatis transmissibility that were developed for this study (see Modelling the transmission dynamics of C. trachomatis).…”

“…This can be defined as the number of transmissions that might have occurred from index cases' partners to their sexual partners. 9 Secondary transmission is difficult to measure empirically in clinical studies because information about subsequent partners is often not collected and, if a secondary partner is infected, the direction of transmission is not known. It can, however, be estimated in modelling studies.…”

“…45 Third, we estimate the impact on secondary transmission of traditional methods of partner notification for different types of sexual partner seen in UK genitourinary medicine clinics, using static modelling. 9 Mathematical modelling of the impact of partner notification technologies Studies in this section address objective (ii). First, we describe the modelling studies that we conducted to address uncertainties in estimates of the duration 46 and transmissibility 47 of C. trachomatis and to resolve differences between the results of previous individual-based models of C. trachomatis transmission.…”

“…8 Treating the regular sexual partner of an individual with chlamydia prevents reinfection within the partnership, but treating their casual partner(s) could prevent both reinfection and onward transmission. 9 …”

“…Here, we use a simple algorithm that clinicians and public health teams can use, without the need for onerous data collection or computational methods. 9 …”