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Learning Objective:
By the end of the presentation participants will be able to identify three reasons that hepatitis prevention necessitates different injection practices than those promoted for HIV prevention.
By the end of the presentation participants will be able to identify four safer injection practices which prevent viral hepatitis prevention.
By the end of the presentation participants will be able to describe two critical elements of work with people injecting to prevent viral hepatitis.
Background:
It was the HIV pandemic which put safer injection on the public health radar screen. Twenty years into the HIV pandemic it is ironically viral hepatitis which is becoming the gold-standard of safer inejction. A hepatitis preventative injection also prevents HIV transmission but the inverse may not be true.
A research study conducted on our work by Yale University in 1996-1997 showed how HIV informed but hepatitis confused we were thus motivating this program improvement.
Setting:
A large multi-modal outreach in Chicagoland targeting people injecting.
Population e.g. API Youth, MSM, IDU:
IDU or all races/ethnicities, ages and drugs of injection.
Project Description:
A pictoral guide to describe and stimulate discussion of viral hepatitis preventative measures was developed by CRA participants and staff. It has been used in poster and card form to teach safer injection with great success and popularity. It can be viewed at anypositivechange.org.
Results/Lessons Learned:
Despite stigma to the contrary, people injecting have strong motivation to modify their injection practices to reduce hepatitis transmission risks as well as other reasons.
Often, messages about preventing viral hepatitis transmission are more motivating to our participants than messages about HIV.
People injecting can be quite successful at reducing harm from injection, including viral hepatitis prevention, when empowered to do so. Rates of HCV infection in Chicago have been measured as high as 905 but CRA's participants have a rate closer to 40%.
Web Page: anypositivechange.org
See more of Poster Session #2
See more of The 2005 National Viral Hepatitis Prevention Conference