Abstract
Description: In March 2020, the White House Coronavirus Task Force determined that clinicians in the United States needed expert treatment guidelines to optimally manage patients with COVID-19, a potentially life-threatening disease caused by a new pathogen for which no specific treatments were known to be effective. Methods: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services requested that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) take the lead in expeditiously convening a panel of experts to create “living” guidelines that would be widely accessible and capable of frequent updating as important new information became available. Recommendations: The purpose of this article is to expand on the experiences of the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines Panel (the Panel) over the past 4 years, summarize the Panel’s final recommendations for COVID-19, highlight some challenges and unanswered questions about COVID-19 management, and inform future responses to public health emergencies. The Panel was formed in March 2020, and the first iteration of the guidelines was released in April 2020. Now that the public health emergency has ended, the NIH COVID-19 Treatment Guidelines have sunsetted. This role will now fall to professional societies and organizations, such as the American College of Physicians, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Pediatric Infectious Diseases Society, and the World Health Organization, all of which have been active in this area.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 1547-1557 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Annals of internal medicine |
Volume | 177 |
Issue number | 11 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Nov 2024 |
Funding
The authors thank the current and former directors and former acting directors of the NIH and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (Monica Bertagnolli, Francis Collins, Lawrence Tabak, Jeanne Marrazzo, Anthony Fauci, and Hugh Auchincloss) for their leadership and support; Laura McNay of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Beth Baseler and Marylu Schaffhauser of the Clinical Monitoring Research Program Directorate at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research; Beth Grace of Grace Consulting Services; Diane Ben-Senia, Allison Bohac, Jane Colilla, Beta Lear, Claire Lund, and Megan Maines of ICF International; Joelle Mornini and Nancy Terry of the NIH Library; former NIH support staff Laura Bosque, Page Crew, Laurie Doepel, and Robert Eisinger; the Panel members who departed the Panel before the final iteration of the Guidelines (Robert Walker [BARDA], John T. Brooks and Demetre C. Daskalakis [CDC], Susan Davis [Wayne State University], Steven Grapentine [University of California, San Francisco], Susanna Naggie [Duke University], Ann Collier [University of Washington], Robinder Khemani [Keck School of Medicine of University of Southern California], Renee Stapleton [University of Vermont], Kevin Wilson [Boston University], and Philip Zachariah [Pfizer]); and consultants Sarita Boyd (FDA), Jomy George (NIH), and Kim Scarsi (University of Nebraska Medical Center). This project has been funded in part with federal funds from the National Cancer Institute of the NIH under contract 75N91019D00024, task order 75N91020F00004. The administrative contract support for the Guidelines website was substantial, consisting of 220 to 283 hours per week (11 000 to 14 000 hours per year) (Table 4 of Supplement 2). This support included editing of the Guidelines document and creation, development, hosting, and maintenance of the Guidelines website. The staff support included project and technical managers, editors, graphic designers, web designers, and communications specialists. An additional contract supported a program manager who was responsible for searching for and organizing scientific information, keeping records, and preparing documents. The amount of labor and other resources needed to support the Guidelines was likely far more than most professional societies could provide, especially when rapid launch of the project and frequent updates were required. This administrative support was provided through the National Cancer Institute\u2019s Federally Funded Research and Development Center and its contract with Leidos Biomedical Research and its subcontract with ICF Consultants. Financial Support: This project has been funded in part with federal funds from the National Cancer Institute of the NIH under contract 75N91019D00024, task order 75N91020F00004.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Internal Medicine