COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Impacts on Newborn Screening Public Health Surveillance.

Newborn screening (NBS) is an essential public health service that performs screening to identify those newborns at increased risk for a panel of disorders, most of which are genetic. The goal of screening is to link those newborns at the highest risk to timely intervention and potentially life-saving treatment. The global COVID-19 pandemic led to disruptions within the United States public health system, revealing implications for the continuity of newborn screening laboratories and follow-up operations. The impacts of COVID-19 across different states at various time points meant that NBS programs impacted by the pandemic later could benefit from the immediate experiences of the earlier impacted programs. This article will review the collection, analysis, and dissemination of information during the COVID-19 pandemic facilitated by a national, centralized technical assistance and resource center for NBS programs.

Empowering newborn screening programs in African countries through establishment of an international collaborative effort.

In an effort to explore new knowledge and to develop meaningful collaborations for improving child health, the First Pan African Workshop on Newborn Screening was convened in June 2019 in Rabat, Morocco. Participants included an informal network of newborn screening stakeholders from across Africa and global experts in newborn screening and sickle cell disease. Over 150 attendees, representing 20 countries, were present including 11 African countries. The agenda focused on newborn screening rationale, techniques, system development, implementation barriers, ongoing research, and collaborations both globally and across Africa. We provide an overview of the workshop and a description of the newborn screening activities in the 11 African countries represented at the workshop, with a focus on sickle cell disease.

Cost-Effectiveness/Cost-Benefit Analysis of Newborn Screening for Severe Combined Immune Deficiency in Washington State.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the expected cost-effectiveness and net benefit of the recent implementation of newborn screening (NBS) for severe combined immunodeficiency (SCID) in Washington State. STUDY DESIGN: We constructed a decision analysis model to estimate the costs and benefits of NBS in an annual birth cohort of 86 600 infants based on projections of avoided infant deaths. Point estimates and ranges for input variables, including the birth prevalence of SCID, proportion detected asymptomatically without screening through family history, screening test characteristics, survival rates, and costs of screening, diagnosis, and treatment were derived from published estimates, expert opinion, and the Washington NBS program. We estimated treatment costs stratified by age of identification and SCID type (with or without adenosine deaminase deficiency). Economic benefit was estimated using values of $4.2 and $9.0 million per death averted. We performed sensitivity analyses to evaluate the influence of key variables on the incremental cost-effectiveness ratio (ICER) of net direct cost per life-year saved. RESULTS: Our model predicts an additional 1.19 newborn infants with SCID detected preclinically through screening, in addition to those who would have been detected early through family history, and 0.40 deaths averted annually. Our base-case model suggests an ICER of $35 311 per life-year saved, and a benefit-cost ratio of either 5.31 or 2.71. Sensitivity analyses found ICER values <$100 000 and positive net benefit for plausible assumptions on all variables. CONCLUSIONS: Our model suggests that NBS for SCID in Washington is likely to be cost-effective and to show positive net economic benefit.