Jul 25
SF Public Press offers hep B series
Cynthia Laird READ TIME: 3 MIN.
The San Francisco Public Press examined recent efforts to step up diagnosis, vaccination, and treatment for hepatitis B. Chronic hepatitis B affects an estimated 305,000 people in California, with the vast majority of cases affecting people in Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, the paper noted.
Deep racial and cultural disparities in illness caused by the hepatitis B virus have persisted for decades. A cure is in trials, but those inequities, along with federal funding cuts, could hamper its rollout, the series found.
Titled “Silent Killer,” the series includes three articles and a podcast. The Bay Area Reporter is sharing links to the series for our readers. The podcast episode has information about HIV and drug development.
The first piece looks at how hep B is tracked and affects Asian Americans the most. It also looks into how underfunded screening and data collections are.
Article two by Zhe Wu addresses stigma around hep B.
For Wendy Lo, who for three years has been an advocate for those with chronic hepatitis B, breaking the silence around her own diagnosis has been a slow, emotionally complex journey, Wu reports.
“I did it with a lot of hesitation and mixed emotions,” said Lo, recalling the first time she shared her experience in public.
Commonly known as a “silent killer” because it can have few symptoms, chronic hepatitis B can lead to liver damage or cancer, is not well studied, and as a research area remains underfunded. Many living with it face significant social stigma, which discourages getting tested and leaves patients isolated and unwilling to open up about their experiences.
The silence hits immigrant communities the hardest, a phenomenon advocates have spent decades trying to fix. Asian Americans are disproportionately affected by hepatitis B, especially by chronic infections. Years of community work have led to better outreach, and new efforts like universal screening are starting to build momentum.
The third piece examines effects the Trump administration is having on medical research funding, including to the Food and Drug Administration, as scientists look for a cure for hep B.
Wu and Mel Baker report, “Dr. Maurizio Bonacini, a gastroenterologist at the University of California, San Francisco, is directing one arm of a 72-week-long, triple-drug therapy study that backers hope will cure many patients of chronic hepatitis B. He projected that the B-United international trial, funded by GSK, formerly known as GlaxoSmithKline, could conclude by 2027. But if the trial is successful, Bonacini said cuts to the FDA’s budget, of 5.5% beginning next year, could delay approval of the potential cure for years.”
Finally, in the Public Press’ “Civic” podcast, Baker looks at how a push by community organizers around the country for universal hepatitis B screening is gaining momentum.
In San Francisco, clinics like North East Medical Services, where many Asian American immigrants receive care, routinely offer universal hepatitis B screening, meaning primary care doctors there are regularly suggesting it to their patients, the paper reports. This kind of preventive action is becoming increasingly common in the Bay Area.
The regional root of this effort traces to the early 2000s, when a wave of deaths among young Asian Americans due to hepatitis B shocked the community. In response, local leaders and physicians in 2007 formed San Francisco Hep B Free, a coalition that brought together government officials and representatives from the major hospitals and health providers in the region to discuss the illness. They laid the groundwork for public outreach campaigns, free screenings and better education for doctors – many of whom had little experience diagnosing and treating the disease.
In some ways, the community initiative echoed work by local physicians and patient advocates to create a model of care for the treatment of HIV/AIDS at San Francisco General Hospital’s Ward 85 in 1983.
Check out this important series at sfpublicpress.org.
The reporting was supported with a California Health Equity Fellowship from the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism and a grant from the Pulitzer Center .
These stories were originally published in the San Francisco Public Press, an independent nonprofit news organization. Get alerts about new reporting at sfpublicpress.org/newsletter.
