Making the Vietnamese Community Hep B Free
November 18, 2008
One in seven Vietnamese Americans is chronically infected with hepatitis B, and the rate of liver cancer among Vietnamese American men is the highest of any ethnic group.
To outreach to the Vietnamese American community in the Bay Area and to educate them about the disease, the University of California, San Francisco, Vietnamese Community Health Promotion Project, an active participating partner of the S.F. Hep B Free Campaign, launched the Viet Hep B Free Project three years ago.
Funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Center on Minority Health and Health Disparities, the project created a 43-month media campaign currently underway in Northern California.
By placing informative television and newspaper ads in prominent Vietnamese media outlets, including Mo Magazine, Thoi Boi and Vietnam Daily, Viet Hep B Free hopes to raise awareness for the disease and publicize screenings in San Jose and San Francisco.
Earlier this year, Viet Hep B Free also worked with the Asian Pacific Islander Wellness Center to promote free screenings that the center hosted at the Vietnamese New Year’s Tet Festival of San Francisco.
Project director of Viet Hep B Free Ching Wong said at the end of this media outreach campaign that they will assess the effectiveness of the education campaign by conducting community surveys measuring general hepatitis B knowledge. This data will then be compared with surveys from Vietnamese Americans in the East Coast, where a hepatitis B outreach campaign for their community does not yet exist.
“We hope this campaign will be a successful model for others to use,” said Wong, whose cousin passed away from the disease at the age of 40.
“Many people don’t understand the disease and how it spreads, and I hope our outreach campaign will change that and decrease the number of those infected,” he said.
For more about the Viet Hep B Free Project viethepbfree.org. For more about S.F. Hep B Free sfhepbfree.org
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