Building Partnerships with Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners to Increase Hepatitis B Awareness and Prevention

Objectives: The annual Hepatitis B Prevention and Education Symposium aims to develop partnerships between non-Western and Western health care providers to prevent chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection and death from liver cancer among Asians and Pacific Islanders (APIs).

Design: Each year from 2004 through 2007, we partnered with professional, academic, and community-based organizations to organize an educational symposium for Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioners and acupuncturists in California. Participants completed pre- and postsymposium surveys assessing knowledge about HBV and liver cancer.

Setting: The symposia were held in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Stanford, California.

Subjects: Over 1000 participants attended the four symposia combined; most were born in Asia.

Intervention: Symposium activities included educational lectures and games, presentation of a physician's guide to HBV management, and case studies.

Outcome measures: Chi-square tests were used to compare the proportion of correct responses to each knowledge-based question, as well as the total number of correct responses, before and after the symposium.

Results: Knowledge about HBV and liver cancer was low prior to the symposium. The proportion of correct responses to the most commonly mistaken questions increased significantly at the conclusion of each symposium. The total number of correct responses rose from below 60% to above 75% each year.

Conclusions: Similar educational symposia targeting health care providers who serve API patients can improve HBV and liver cancer awareness and prevention throughout the API community.

LInk:

http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/acm.2007.0655