New Publication on Expanding Hepatitis C Testing and Treatment in Jails and Prisons

The Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse at the University of Michigan Law School is pleased to share the second in a series of white papers focused on criminal justice policy. The white paper series draws from the tens of thousands of litigation documents in the Clearinghouse collection to explore promising practices and develop model policies.

The latest white paper, published in April 2023, is Policies for Expanding Hepatitis C Testing and Treatment in United States Prisons and Jails. The paper is co-authored by Clearinghouse Managing Attorney Tessa Bialek, JD, and Matthew J. Akiyama, MD, MSc, associate professor, Department of Medicine, Divisions of General Internal Medicine and Infectious Disease, Montefiore Medical Center and Albert Einstein College of Medicine. The authors presented on Litigation-Informed Best Practices for Hepatitis C Screening and Treatment at the Spring Conference on Correctional Health Care in New Orleans earlier this month.

The white paper proposes best practices for prisons and jails to scale up hepatitis C testing and direct-acting antiviral treatment as well as recommendations to support successful outcomes. Resources accompanying the white paper include:

Special collection of relevant cases: The Clearinghouse collects cases seeking direct-acting antiviral treatment in prisons and jails as well as litigation documents, judicial opinions, and settlement agreements from those cases.

Comprehensive policy recommendations: The white paper draws from litigation documents, current medical guidance and best practice, existing policies, and insights from practitioners and advocates to propose detailed policy recommendations. Recommendations address testing, monitoring and evaluation, treatment, education, linkage to community care, staffing and staff training, and more. The policies are discussed in detail, with commentary, and are also available in a template intended for prison and jail systems to copy, paste, and adapt into functional policies for their own systems and facilities. The recommended policies are endorsed by the National Hepatitis Corrections Network, Treatment Action Group, the National Viral Hepatitis Roundtable, and the Academic Consortium on Criminal Justice Health.

You can find the white paper, case collection, model policies in template form, and all other related resources here.