The primary objective of the Illinois State Perinatal Hepatitis B Program is to prevent the acquisition of hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection by at-risk infants born to HBsAg positive-women. We do this by promoting and ensuring routine maternal screening and birth dose vaccination policies in all 108 birthing hospitals in downstate Illinois.

Our program goals are to:

• promote prenatal HBsAg testing of every pregnant woman, with each pregnancy;
• educate local health departments (LHD) and birthing hospitals;
• increase case finding;
• provide case follow-up and management of household contacts;
• develop strategies to increase the birth dose administration;
• assess and expand perinatal hepatitis prevention initiatives in collaboration with the Illinois Chapter, American Academy of Pediatrics;
• develop strategies for administration of the full hepatitis B vaccine series for each child;
• promote postvaccination testing of babies born to HBsAg-positive mothers;
• promote surveillance by LHDs, state programs or private practitioners;
• create complete and reliable case files within state electronic record systems of Illinois' National Electronic Disease Surveillance System- (I-NEDSS), Tracking our Toddlers Shots (TOTS), and Illinois Comprehensive Automated Immunization Registry Exchange (I-CARE);
• provide lab supplies from the State lab for LHDs that do blood draw onsite;
• track serology lab results from private labs;
• promote collegial relationship with private providers in order to maintain and sustain accurate and timely reports (sharing of vaccine administration dates and serology retesting reports/dates);
• provide ongoing education of regional and LHD staff;
• develop a collegial relationship with City of Chicago Perinatal Hepatitis B Coordinator; and
• provide ongoing utilization of data from case files for accountability, QA, focus of efforts, and research.