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Learning Objective:
By the end of the presentation participants will:
- Appreciate the importance of addressing hepatitis in urban American Indian and Alaska Natives (AI/AN)
- Understand the challenges to integrating education/counseling, and immunization into screening and testing activities
- Identify the steps for building a sustainable information retrieval system for conducting epidemiologic analyses and program evaluation
Background:
Sixty-one percent of AI/AN reside in urban centers. Despite this, minimal information exists regarding hepatitis epidemiology and the effectiveness of screening and prevention services in this population. The Viral Hepatitis Integration Project (VHIP) at the Seattle Indian Health Board (SIHB) provides hepatitis and HIV screening and prevention services for urban AI/AN as part of CDC's VHIP program that operates through the Indian Health Service.
Setting:
Thunderbird Treatment Center (TTC), SIHB's residential chemical dependency treatment facility.
Population e.g. API Youth, MSM, IDU:
All TTC patients including non-AI/AN. Use of alcohol use, injection drugs, and incarceration are prevalent.
Project Description:
Activities include hepatitis screening, education, counseling, testing, and immunization integrated into existing patient flow. Collected risk assessment, testing, and immunization information is analyzed to better understand hepatitis epidemiology in the target population as well as to evaluate program effectiveness. Plans include VHIP expansion to other SIHB departments and urban Indian health organizations nationwide.
Results/Lessons Learned:
- Between 4/31/04 and 3/1/05, 526 patients were screened. Of these, hepatitis A and B vaccines were administered to 372 (71%) patients and 364 (69%) patients, respectively.
- Standardization of screening activities improves the quality of information collected. Uniform screening tools, training activities, and education/counseling procedures, designed with input from clinical staff and epidemiologists, contribute towards such standardization.
- Assessing project impact and efficacy through ongoing program evaluation requires collected project information.
- Establishing a critical feedback loop with clinical staff to share the results of information collected, promotes project support and improvement.
See more of E6 - Hepatitis Prevention for American Indian and Alaska Native Populations
See more of The 2005 National Viral Hepatitis Prevention Conference