Decreases in Young Children Who Received Blood Lead Level Testing During COVID-19 - 34 Jurisdictions, January-May 2020.

Exposure to lead, a toxic metal, can result in severe effects in children, including decreased ability to learn, permanent neurologic damage, organ failure, and death. CDC and other health care organizations recommend routine blood lead level (BLL) testing among children as part of well-child examinations to facilitate prompt identification of elevated BLL, eliminate source exposure, and provide medical and other services (1). To describe BLL testing trends among young children during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, CDC analyzed data reported from 34 state and local health departments about BLL testing among children aged <6 years conducted during January-May 2019 and January-May 2020. Compared with testing in 2019, testing during January-May 2020 decreased by 34%, with 480,172 fewer children tested. An estimated 9,603 children with elevated BLL were missed because of decreased BLL testing. Despite geographic variability, all health departments reported fewer children tested for BLL after the national COVID-19 emergency declaration (March-May 2020). In addition, health departments reported difficulty conducting medical follow-up and environmental investigations for children with elevated BLLs because of staffing shortages and constraints on home visits associated with the pandemic. Providers and public health agencies need to take action to ensure that children who missed their scheduled blood lead screening test, or who required follow-up on an earlier high BLL, be tested as soon as possible and receive appropriate care.

CDC's Lead Poisoning Prevention Program: A Long-standing Responsibility and Commitment to Protect Children From Lead Exposure.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program (CLPPP) serves as the nation's public health leader and resource on strategies, policies, and practices aimed at preventing lead exposure in young children. CDC supports and advises state and local public health agencies and works with other federal agencies and partners to achieve the Healthy People 2020 objective of eliminating childhood lead exposure as a public health concern. Primary prevention-the removal of lead hazards from the environment before a child is exposed-is the most effective way to ensure that children do not experience the harmful effects of lead exposure. Blood lead screening tests and secondary prevention remain an essential safety net for children who may be exposed to lead. CDC's key programmatic strategy is to strengthen blood lead surveillance by supporting state and local programs to improve blood lead screening test rates, identify high-risk populations, and ensure effective follow-up for children with elevated blood lead levels. Surveillance plays a central role in helping measure the collective progress of federal, state, and local public health agencies in protecting children from lead, as well as enhancing our ability to target population-based interventions for primary prevention to those areas at highest risk. The CDC CLPPP has been at the front line of efforts to protect children from lead exposure and the resulting adverse health effects over the last 3 decades. As we chart our path for the future, we will continue to learn from past successes and challenges, incorporate new evidence and lessons learned, and work closely with federal, state, local, and nonprofit partners, experts in academia, and the community to advance the overarching goal of eliminating lead exposure in children.

Identifying and Chronicling Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program Achievements With "Success Stories".

Success stories showcase a public health program's progress toward achieving population health objectives. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC's) Childhood Lead Poisoning Prevention Program (CLPPP) develops "success stories" in partnership with state and local cooperative agreement recipients as one way to highlight lead poisoning prevention achievements. Success stories can be used to inform policy makers, stakeholders, and the general public. Over time, the process for collecting and developing CLPPP "successes" has evolved. Early efforts to collect success stories from funded recipients resulted in broad or unfocused reports that diminished the program's perceived impact. CDC's CLPPP revised the approach to success story development in order to better articulate the context, intervention or activity, and results related to programs' successes. The new approach results in stronger products ensuring that both CDC and program recipients can use the success stories to demonstrate achievement of key program objectives. We describe how success stories can be used to identify, chronicle, and mobilize public health program achievements using the example of lead poisoning prevention. Success stories allow programs to increase mission awareness, build stakeholder support, generate community interest, and collectively demonstrate progress toward meeting national program objectives.