Stanford Free Clinic in San Jose Launches Hepatitis B Campaign

Business Wire, July 2, 2007

STANFORD, Calif. -- Students from the Stanford University School of Medicine will launch a new effort in San Jose to provide comprehensive hepatitis B medical services, targeting uninsured Asian and Pacific Islanders with low incomes.

The Hep B Free Campaign will provide free hepatitis B testing and low-cost vaccinations at the Pacific Free Clinic for high-risk Asians and Pacific Islanders in the San Jose community. For those already chronically infected with the hepatitis B virus, the clinic will provide appropriate monitoring with blood tests and liver ultrasounds, referrals and antiviral treatment.

The campaign launches July 7 at the Pacific Free Clinic, based at Overfelt High School at 1835 Cunningham Ave. in San Jose. The campaign's theme is, "Be Sure, Be Tested and Be Hep B Free." The campaign co-founders are Elizabeth Chao and Steven Chin, Stanford medical students who are recipients of a U.S. Albert Schweitzer fellowship.

Regardless of a patient's ability to pay or immigration status, the Pacific Free Clinic offers on-site medical interpretation services in Vietnamese and Chinese to help patients overcome cultural and language barriers to health care. In addition to the medical students who volunteer, the clinic is staffed by physicians, including medical director Rex Chiu, MD, clinical assistant professor of medicine at Stanford. The clinic is open Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

According to Stanford's Asian Liver Center, hepatitis B is the world's most common serious disease of the liver and can lead to premature death from liver cancer. The virus is endemic to Asia, and can be transmitted at birth from an infected mother to a newborn. Most children who become chronically infected have no symptoms for 20 to 40 years.

About one in 10 foreign-born Asians, particularly those from southeast Asia and China, have chronic hepatitis B infection -- a rate 100 times higher than that of Hispanic or white Americans. Many are unaware they are infected. The virus will eventually kill one in four people who are chronically infected, but this can be avoided with monitoring and treatment, according to Chiu.

"Most of the Asian and Pacific Islanders in San Jose are recent immigrants and their doctors have never tested them," said Samuel So, MD, the Lui Hac Minh Professor of Surgery and director of the Asian Liver Center.

Information about the clinic is available online at http://pacific.stanford.edu/home.html. For information about hepatitis B and liver cancer, visit http://liver.stanford.edu. For other questions, contact Steven Lin at linsteve@stanford.edu or (919) 452-8073.

Stanford University Medical Center integrates research, medical education and patient care at its three institutions -- Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford Hospital & Clinics and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford. For more information, please visit the Web site of the medical center's Office of Communication & Public Affairs at http://mednews.stanford.edu.

NOTE TO THE MEDIA: Reporters are invited to the news conference and ceremony launching the hepatitis B campaign at 11 a.m. July 7 at the Pacific Free Clinic, which is based at Overfelt High School, 1835 Cunningham Ave., San Jose.