Author information

¹Disease Elimination Program, Burnet Institute, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.

²Department of Gastroenterology, St Vincent's Hospital Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.

³School of Public Health and Preventive Medicine, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.

⁴Viral Immunology Systems Program, The Kirby Institute, UNSW Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia.

⁵Hepatitis Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia.

⁶Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society, La Trobe University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.

⁷Department of Medicine, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.

Abstract

To reach World Health Organization elimination targets for hepatitis C, different strategies are needed to reach people who have not yet been diagnosed and treated. In the context of declining treatment initiation rates, innovation in service design and delivery is necessary: testing and treatment needs to be offered to people in non-traditional settings. The community corrections (probation and parole) population is larger than the prison population, which has high prevalence of hepatitis C and-in some countries-established diagnosis and treatment programs. In this Viewpointwe identify a gap in hepatitis C care for people under community correctional supervision, a group who have either never been imprisoned or need continuity of healthcare provided in prison. We propose that offering hepatitis C screening and treatment would benefit this population, and accelerate progress to hepatitis C elimination.