Department of Health and Human Services March 28, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) is hereby giving notice that the National Vaccine Program Office (NVPO) will convene a meeting of the Vaccine Finance Working Group and is inviting input from stakeholders on this issue. The meeting will be open to the public.

On Tuesday, May 16, 2006, CDC published draft criteria for removing chemicals from future releases of CDC's National Report on Human Exposure to Environmental Chemicals (the ``Report'') (See FR, Vol. 71, No. 94, p. 28346-7). This and previous notices related to the ``Report'' are at https://www.cdc.gov/exposurereport/chemical_ nominations.htm. The proposed criteria provided that a chemical may be removed from the ``Report'' if (1) a new replacement chemical (i.e., a metabolite) is more representative of exposure than is the chemical currently measured; or (2) after three survey periods (or not less than 6 years), detection rates for all chemicals within a methodological and chemically related group are less than 5 percent for all population subgroups (i.e., two sexes, three race/ethnicity groups, and three age groups); or (3) after three survey periods (or not less than 6 years), levels of chemicals within a methodological and chemically related group are unchanged or declining in all the specific subgroups as documented in the ``Report.'' Using these criteria, CDC would have continued to measure the chemical and not remove it from the ``Report'' if it met either of two proposed exceptions to these criteria: (a) It is a chemical for which there is an established biomonitoring threshold (e.g., CDC's level of concern for blood lead levels in children) or any chemical for which there is widespread public health concern (e.g., mercury) or (b) three survey periods (or not less than 6 years) have passed, constituting the minimum time before a chemical could be removed; a longer period may be necessary to account for the half-life of a particular chemical or to account for a recent change (e.g., the removal of a chemical from commerce) that would necessitate monitoring of the population. In that notice, CDC pointed out that the criteria for removing a chemical from the ``Report'' are not corollaries of the criteria for adding chemicals to the ``Report.''

This final notice announces our decision to approve the Community Health Accreditation Program (CHAP) for recognition as a national accreditation program for home health agencies (HHAs) seeking to participate in the Medicare or Medicaid programs.