NACCHO seeks to improve the health of communities by strengthening and advocating for local health departments (LHDs) and supporting effective local public health practices and systems. In late 2020, CDC recommended a test-of-cure for persons with pharyngeal gonorrhea 7-14 days after initial treatment, regardless of treatment regime. Pharyngeal GC TOC is intended to mitigate the spread of antimicrobial-resistant (AR) GC by re-testing all who are diagnosed with pharyngeal gonorrhea after they receive recommended treatment to ensure their infection is eradicated.

In 2021, to understand the feasibility and necessity of implementing pharyngeal gonorrhea test of cure in local health departments, NACCHO partnered with the CDC’s DSTDP and released a request for applications (RFA) for the Pharyngeal Gonorrhea Test of Cure Project. The RFA funded four sites (Maricopa County, San Francisco, Washington DC, and Denver) to evaluate the feasibility of implementing TOC for all pharyngeal GC cases in clinical practice, the yield of pharyngeal GC TOC to detect treatment failures to CDC-recommended first-line treatment, and models and best practices for monitoring and responding to potential GC treatment failures. In addition, the evaluation explored how outcomes associated with TOC implementation varied across testing strategies (e.g., in-clinic vs. self-collection test kits).

To understand more about the projects and considerations for implementing pharyngeal gonorrhea test of cure, NACCHO developed a Final Report on the project. If you are considering implementing test-of-cure, see the complementary Toolkit on implementing routine pharyngeal GC TOC.