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IMPACT - Treatment adherence in people with tuberculosis

The IMPACT study: Intervening with a Manualised Package to Achieve treatment adherence in people with TuberculosisÌý

January 2018 – December 2021

Compared to the rest of the UK and Western Europe, England has a major problem with the infectious disease tuberculosis (TB). The large amount of TB in the country has led Public Health England (PHE) and NHS England to develop a national TB control plan. Treatment lasts a long time (at least six months, and even more in people with drug resistant TB). Finding ways to make sure that people are able to take all of their medication as prescribed is one of the plan’s priorities. If people miss doses (described as being ‘non-adherent or poorly adherent to treatment), their TB can develop resistance to the usual drugs, risking both their health and that of others.

In the UK, treatment completion and adherence among TB patients is variable. Unfortunately, current methods of treatment support often fail to adequately identify individuals struggling to adhere to treatment or to respond to the important underlying reasons for non-adherence. This project aims to develop, pilot, and evaluate process and interim outcomes for a manualised intervention package that improves adherence to treatment for TB among NHS patients at risk of poor adherence due to social and cultural factors.

Karina Kielmann (Reader, IGHD) is a co-investigator on the UCL-lead project, responsible for oversight and guidance on the qualitative research components of the project.Ìý Aaron Karat, Research Fellow, has been involved in data collection, management, analysis and writing.

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